.

This picture was taken at Oshkosh around 2001

First time I heard of it

Apparently Groen Bros were experimenting with the idea of
using mass produced fuselages and converting them to Gyro's

http://www.abpic.co.uk/photo/1123910/

.

.

According to this article they had plans to install tip jets so it could hover

http://all-aero.com/index.php/34-planes ... -skymaster

.

I used to fly one of those .
Kinda ?

Now that is scary, Gary

I have often thought about getting an old 150 and sticking a set of 30' rotors on it to see if it would work? I mean, how hard can it be?

.

Nice one Gary .

I bet the Groen Bros must have got thinking they took a perfectly good Cessna and slowed it down and made it more expensive.

..

I went up in one once... Gotta watch the rear engine temp... Otherwise, an interesting airplane to fly.

An interesting attempt at resolving the thrust issue of a twin with one engine out.

True GG, I think the main benefit was the load it could lift out of relatively unprepared strips and once cruising you could shut down the one of the engines and save gas:like ... and like you said, if one drops out there is no need to panic (unless it is a fuel starvation issue (out of gas)

As I understand, the military had a version of it... forgot the designation... There is one of them on display at the military aviation museum at Warner Robbins, GA (S of Macon).

This will be a real smart-ass comment...

If a pilot runs out of gas (the pilot that did the walk around before departure)... he/she deserves what happens next. OTOH, the passengers do not.

One of those really DUMB things.

That is NOT a Cessna 337 SKY MASTER that i was flying .
That is a Cessna O-2A DUCK .
If you look close you can see the U.S. NAVY markings on it .
And you can see the hard points on the wing .
And you can see the observation windows in the lower part of the doors.
They all hade battle damage from flying in Vietnam .
Cessna was very pissed that we were still flying them .
Cessna said that they were NOT 337's and were NOT bilt to the same standards and that it was a disposable aircraft that was only expected to fly 10 hours before benign destroyed in combat .
I loved flying them things .

GG, I wasn't saying people who fly them run them out of gas, I was meaning, unless it ran out of gas.... you would have to be very unlucky to lose both engines.... meaning I believe they are a very safe twin

I know Muz... was just commenting about sloppy piloting... happens more than it should.

Perhaps I need to start a comment with 'IMO...'

Because the O2 has a centerline thrust engine arraignment the aircraft don't experience the controllability problems that you experience with the horizontally supposed engine arraignment on an aircraft.
If you lost an engine on an O2 it just got more gutless .

Which one had the most grunt Gary? The front or the back? in other words, was the pusher motor better or the tractor motor better? Which would be best 'to lose' if you had to lose an engine (power) in flight? Or which was the least use

I reckon the pusher might be the more effective? only the cooling issue?

We only operated them Symotaniusly .
As I recal it handled about the same.
I just got a little quieter and you didn't have to worry about having the engines synchronized.
If you didn't have the engines in synch it would scramble your brain .

Yeah, I seem to remember that engine sync thing...
REALLY noisy if they were out.
When I went up, engine out was not done... so do not know about that.
I would 'guess' the pusher would work a bit harder... just a guess.

Speaking of unusual designs of aircraft...

Whatever happened to the Beach 'StarShip'?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beechcraft_Starship

Obviously not enough rich businessmen these days?

The StarShip came out in the 1980's... IMO a bit ahead of its time...
And it seemed to not catch on.

Never heard anything pro or con about it...
And around the mid 1980's kinda left aviation behind... too costly and many other things that needed my time and $$$.

There is some rich guy who has the only flying one that I'm aware of .
He bought every last one of them so that he could pirate parts off of them to keep his flying .
I seen it all on TV .

I was talking with a crew of a commercial 337 and asked them the same questions, their answer was this plane is a pig!
It takes two engines to get in the air that which one engine does on most other planes. The annuals and fuel is twice the price and when one engine goes out they will extend the range to your crash site, cause you cant stay up on one!"
I remember feeling disapointed the plane wasnt cooler.
Always loved the look.

That was one of the things that always crossed my mined , " I'm glad I'm not paying to maintain these things ".
We were very hard on our O2's.