GG, gyros will never be anything but homebuilt barnstormer toys, in my opinion..... yes the factories building the clones make nice looking machines, but they are basically overweight barnstorming toys with nice pods and fairings.... they have only come about because of the lightweight reliable power plants on offer.....

The trouble with gyros since the start has been weight..... the more a gyro weighs, the more power it needs, the more drag it makes, the faster it has to lift off and land..... they become clumsy with heavier weights and although they make nice cross country machines, they are not as much 'fun' as just open or semi podded homebuilts.....

With the modern composites, modern engines etc available since about the 90's, if gyros could have been used as 3 or 4 seaters, it would have been done by now.... but it has been proven time and time again that to carry more than 2 medium sized people, costs too much in weight, drag and fuel to ever be considered for anything like mass produced type general aviation.....

I believe the next step gyros will take, is like a euro clone, but lose the frame and go monocock construction in carbon fiber, retractible and air conditioning/heating in the enclosed type..... All of the euro clones prove that that weight of machine can fly, the next step is to reduce the weight of the machine so at least the machine can carry 2 decent sized people and a decent amount of gas..... and to burn less gas doing it....

To me, real gyros will always be home built barnstormers I hope they never go away

On the body creating lift, that is a definite no no.... nothing can be allowed to carry the gyro except the rotor.... anything that might possibly give any lift has to be behind the mast (CofG) because anything that unloads the rotor is inviting disaster. I have heard of people thinking of fitting canard wings at the front.... but due to the way the rotor works it is obvious to me at least how deadly any sort of wing forward of the cofg would be.... no matter how cool it may look

FW's can fly negative until your eyes pop A gyro, the rotors are flying.... the 'airframe' is suspended below (but not flying).... the airframe of a gyro can not fly and must not fly.... any time you unweight the rotor, you risk a powered pushover.... unweighting means .5 of a G is not enough weight on the rotor.... it can and will slow down very quickly....

If someone made a gyro with winglets or lifting body... say they got to cruising speed say 60 mph and the body can create a .5 G situation at 70 mph..... the machine would go to 70 mph and the rotor would begin to slow down at 75 mph or the first gust of wind, the rotors would fold up and you would find yourself sitting in a lawn dart looking at your crash site (soon to be... very soon)

That is also why, if there is X amount of drag from the pod/canopy in an absolute vertical descent, there has to be more than X amount of drag downwards (greater area) in the tail setup or horizontal stabilizer.... otherwise, in a true vertical, the machine would descend tail low and often slip backwards (tail slide/rudder reversal yada yada yada), which can be catastrophic as the prop blast could be blown away from tail/HS surfaces... Which makes for a bad day usually

Gabors, gyro: