Granville (Gee Bee) Racing Gyroplane of 1935

[jzichek]

Check out this short entry at RetroMechanix.com on the Granville Racing Gyroplane project of 1935:



The study appears to be a conversion of the Gee Bee R-1/R-2 Senior Sportster hybrid into a two-place autogyro. The drawing is from a clipping found in a NACA file at National Archives II in College Park, MD and apparently originates from the February 1935 issue of Aero Digest. Unfortunately, the clipping did not include a caption or article giving further details on the type. If anyone has the full article or additional information on this study, feel free to respond here or on the site.

-Jared

[robkamm]

What the.... interesting . I would like to hear more also. i have a few older books on the granvilles and theres nothing in them about this jem.

[jzichek]

Yes, I've not seen it before either even though it's from a secondary source. I found a few excerpts of old Aero Digest magazines on Google Books but not the particular issue that this was printed in; hopefully someone out there has it and is willing to share more information on this nifty golden age project.

[JohnB]

Racing gyroplane is an oxymoron...
Are we sure it's not some sort of prank?
Unless it was done to try to keep the beast stable by incleasing the "wing" area perhaps they thought a rotating wing would give less drag than a fixed wing).
I wonder if the rotor heads and (probably) fabric covered rotor blades could withstand GeeBee speeds (or torque).