Word: cierva
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...Madrid in 1912 the French proprietor of a motorcycle shop owned a French biplane which he crashed during an exhibition. Chagrined, he dumped the wreckage in his back yard. To chubby, 17-year-old Juan de la Cierva and two cronies, this was tempting bait. They offered to rebuild the plane if the Frenchman would test-fly it. Laughingly he agreed. All that was salvageable were the motor and wheels. All the resources the three boys had were $60 and a knowledge of arithmetic. Nonetheless, to Madrid's amazement, their jerry-built contraption flew. It was the first Spanish...
...second tri-motor. The test pilot crashed it by flying too low too slow. This rammed into the young designer's mind the two prime weaknesses of airplanes: they are utterly dependent upon their motors; they need lots of room to land or take off. Juan de la Cierva resolved to remove these flaws, began toying with helicopters (planes with the propeller faced vertically). He got the idea of disconnecting the helicopter propeller from the engine, enlarging it. Result in 1920 was the first autogiro, which did not fly. Neither did the second or third model. Then, according...
...first ridiculed as "the whirling dervish of the air," the autogiro gradually improved during a long tour of Europe punctuated by frequent crashes, which proved the giro's safety because Pilot de la Cierva was never hurt. In 1928, when he flew the English Channel, he won recognition. From then on, England was autogiro headquarters. English capital financed the Cierva Autogiro Co. Inventor de la Cierva, Royalist son of King Alfonso's Minister of War, was glad to stay away from Spain after King Alfonso was dethroned. Except for an occasional spree with his four children, he devoted...
Developed by Autogiro Co. of America, the new giro is the product of many extraordinary recent improvements on the bastard airplane with rotors whose crude ancestor Inventor Juan de la Cierva first made hover in the air 13 years ago. The modern giro is completely wingless, is merely a fuselage with a propeller, a tail, a direct-control rotor. The pilot sets the giro's course by tilting the rotor. In the "readable" model the engine for the first time is behind and below the pilot. This gives him perfect vision on the highway, better balance...
Soon to be adapted to the "roadable" giro is Inventor Cierva's new "jump take-off"-a method by which the giro for the first time can actually rise straight into the air. This is done by briefly gearing the rotor blades to the engine and whirling them at top speed while their angle of incidence is zero. When the clutch is disengaged and the blades are suddenly given a sharp angle of incidence, the giro jumps some 15 feet straight off the ground. Then the propeller drags the giro forward...