           An Alternative to the Air Scout Auto-gyro
                       1998 by Doyle Hunt
               huntdoyl@smtp.lmn.usace.army.mil

     When the Morrow Project game was developed, the Air Scout auto-gyro was
a pretty good idea.  A small, lightweight aircraft that could be disassembled
for storage or transport.  Unfortunately, auto-gyros are uncommon at best,
nonexistent at worst, outside of the kit-built "experimental" category.  Pilot
training is hard to come by for such a critter.  An auto-gyro requires a
runway; not much of one, but still it cannot take off or land vertically.  It
also cannot hover unless it faces into a head wind blowing faster than the
craft's stall speed.  It will stall if flown too slowly, though it will auto-
rotate like a helicopter so that it falls somewhat slower than a brick when it
does stall.  On the plus side, Morrow Project players and directors can see
auto-gyros in action in one or two of the James Bond movies and in The Road
Warrior, so they're not entirely unfamiliar.

     The Air Scout as described in the game manual has a glitch or two.  The
drawings show retractable wheeled tricycle landing gear.  The text description
says skids with inflatable floats.  Since an auto-gyro has to roll forward to
build up speed for takeoff, it must have wheels, though they don't really need
to be retractable.  Still, it is not amphibious.  No floats.  The fuselage as
drawn is actually too small for the two people shown.  Not enough leg room if
they sit semi-reclined, not enough head room if they sit upright.  If the
landing gear is retractable as indicated in the drawings, it retracts into the
front seat area, further reducing cabin space.

     Rather than trying to fix the Air Scout, allow me to offer an
alternative, also from the kit-built arena.  The Rotorway Exec 162F
helicopter.  For those interested, information on the helicopter, and the
company that makes it, is available from the Internet at...

          http://www.rotorway.com/index.html

     The company has been in business almost as long as the Morrow Project,
with several versions of their helicopter, beginning with the Scorpion single-
seater, the Scorpion II two-seater, the Executive, the Exec 90, and finally
the Exec 162F.  Depending upon when your teams were frozen, they could have
trained on any of them.  Depending on when the bolt-holes were last updated,
they could have any of the newer ones, and their training would still be
valid.  What follows concentrates on the Exec 162F, the newest version and the
one for which the most information is available.

     The performance specifications of the Exec 162F are similar to the Air
Scout.  The stock helicopter has a gross weight of 1500 pounds, and an empty
weight (no fuel, passengers, or cargo) of 975 pounds.  This gives 525 pounds
of payload.  Since a fusion-powered Morrow Project version does not need fuel,
the full payload figure is available for pilot(s) and cargo.  Rate of climb is
1000 feet per minute at a forward airspeed of about 60 miles per hour.  If
climbing straight up, it will climb a lot more slowly.  It has a service
ceiling of 10,000 feet, meaning that is the highest it will safely fly.  This
is low enough that the pilot does not need supplemental oxygen or cabin
pressurization.  The helicopter will hover in ground effect at 7,000 feet, and
will hover out of ground effect at 5,000 feet.  Ground effect refers to
altitudes above the local ground elevation (not above sea level) where the
rotor wash reflects off the ground to provide additional lift.  What this
means is that if the ground elevation is less than 5,000 feet, that's as high
as you can hover.  If the ground elevation is greater than 5,000 feet but less
than 7,000 feet, you can only hover a few feet off the ground.  Above 7,000
feet, the Exec 162F cannot take off because the air is too thin to hover at
all.  These figures are reduced somewhat in hot temperatures because hot air
is thinner.  Normal cruising speed is 95 miles per hour, and maximum speed is
115 miles per hour.  The manufacturer recommends a clear area of at least 50
feet in diameter for takeoffs and landings, but if you've got tall
obstructions around, it had better be a somewhat larger area.

     The Exec 162F is 22 feet long, with a 25-foot main rotor diameter.  The
tail rotor is 4 feet in diameter.  The overall height is 8 feet.  Width of the
skids is 5 feet 3 inches.  The helicopter has an egg-shaped fuselage with two
seats in a side-by-side configuration, and since one of the Rotorway
instructors is 6 feet 4 inches tall, there apparently is plenty of headroom
inside the cabin.  In terms of appearance, it's a little bit more streamlined
than the Cayuse helicopter, more like a smaller version of the Aerospatiale
Gazelle.  The fuselage is made of fiberglass with Lexan/Plexiglas windows, but
for the Project this could be improved by using a kevlar composite in place of
the fiberglass.  Say, armor protection roughly equal to resist-weave, and
radiation protection equivalent to the Air Scout or the XR-311.  Not exactly a
tank-killer.

     The engine in the stock version is a lightweight 162 cubic-inch
displacement aircraft version of the venerable Volkswagen engine, designed in-
house by Rotorway.  In fact, the early Scorpion helicopters actually used a
Volkswagen automotive engine.  That being the case, the same fusion power
plant from the XR-311 should provide adequate power for the helicopter as
well.

     For those interested in cost, a Rotorway Exec 162F kit costs around
$65,000 delivered, and the assembled helicopter is worth about $200,000.  A
real bargain for a small-scale Project!

     If only one person is aboard, he has to be in the left-hand seat, and a
25-pound counterweight is attached to the front of the right skid to provide
left-right balance.  No, it doesn't work the other way around, because of the
way torque is transmitted to the airframe from the engine and rotors.  If two
people are aboard, the counterweight is moved to a bracket mounted at the rear
of the fuselage below the tail boom to provide forward-aft balance.  This
means that if one person jumps out, he has to move the counterweight before
the helicopter can safely take off again.  The counterweight is part of the
helicopter's empty weight, and does not detract from the cargo capacity.

     The helicopter comes with removable transparent doors.  Most owners
remove the doors, or simply never install them, in order to maximize cargo
capacity.  I don't know if the empty weight includes doors (the product
literature is unclear on this), so I assume that it does, allowing door
removal to add about 50 pounds of usable cargo weight, at the cost of
shivering pilots.  Cabin heat doesn't do a lot of good with the doors off.

     The Rotorway Exec 162F is a kit-built helicopter, and gets an
"experimental" certification from the Federal Aviation Administration.  This
allows it to only be used for recreational purposes, though it has been used
by ranchers and others for commercial purposes, as long as no paying
passengers or cargo are carried.  This means that the owner/builder can
customize the 162F as he sees fit while remaining legal, a definite benefit
for the Project.

     There is no internal cargo capacity.  All cargo must be carried
externally.  Rotorway addresses this problem by marketing a streamlined cargo
pod which mounts directly under the center of gravity between the skids.  This
product is called a "helipac", and is large enough to hold both helicopter
doors.  This means that it should be large enough to hold two people's
personal loads. A standard helipac slides out to the right-hand side and opens
from the top, which makes it easy to load and unload.

     The Morrow Project should be able to turn a helipac into a weapons pod,
with a couple of machine guns, or one grenade launcher, or even a Mark II
laser with fusion pack.  A single helicopter could be equipped with multiple
interchangeable cargo pods.  A magnetic anomaly detector is a possibility, as
is an aerial photography setup.  No, you can't mount Stokes baskets on the
sides of the skids for medical evacuation, but you can't really do that with
an Air Scout, either.  Maybe a modified helipac mounting bracket to accept one
Stokes basket directly under the fuselage, but side-mounting would stress the
airframe a bit too much.  For those who don't know, a Stokes basket is the
wire-mesh litter that mountaineers use to immobilize injured climbers for
evacuation.  It lets you carry the injured person in just about any position
except face-down without aggravating the injury.

     Instead of the helipac, the Rotorway Exec 162F can also mount an aerial
spraying rig, with the pump and tanks between the skids, and two spray booms
extending out to the sides to about the same width as the rotor diameter. 
However, if the spraying rig is used, only one pilot can be carried without
overloading.  This is one of the features that attracted me to the Exec 162F
as a replacement for the Air Scout.  I am a strong advocate of Morrow Project
equipment having a viable civilian use in addition to it's military potential. 
With the 162F, it becomes possible to set up the Project so that the only air
assets available outside of the MARS units belong to the Agricultural teams!

     For amphibious use, the Full Lotus company makes inflatable floats for
the Exec 162F.  These floats encapsulate the skids, wrapping around them with
a zippered closure.  The company's own literature describes it as "just like a
hot dog bun".  Each float provides 1200 pounds of buoyancy, to provide a
reserve capacity in case of an air leak.  The floats are 12 feet 8 inches long
and 1 foot 7 inches in diameter each, and are shaped like tapered torpedoes. 
They hold their shape with less than full pressure, so even if there is a
leak, the floats don't sag.

     The helicopter rests at the same height on floats in the water as it
does on bare skids on land, for improved stability.  Not that it's terribly
stable.  The helicopter would have to be oriented so that the nose points into
the waves or it will tip over in waves more than about a foot high, especially
with corresponding winds.  The helicopter's draft on the water is only a few
inches.  The floats consist of an outer fabric casing (which could be made of
resist-weave for the Project) and inner bladders.  They're strong enough to
take an auto-rotation landing ( a controlled crash) on land without punctures. 
A pair of floats, with mounting hardware, totals only 46 pounds, so cargo
capacity is not significantly reduced.  Floats cannot be inflated on the fly,
and cannot be stored on the skids when they're not inflated.  You have to
decide before takeoff if amphibious operations are necessary, but at least
such operations are possible, unlike with the Air Scout.

     For transport, the Exec 162F does not break down as far as the Air
Scout.  The rotors are removable, and can be taken off or installed by one man
in an hour.  If the Project version is fusion powered, the tail boom could be
removable as well, though it isn't on the stock version.  The reason for this
is the long mechanical linkage between the engine and tail rotor.  With fusion
power, that mechanical linkage could be replaced by an electrical linkage,
with the tail rotor powered by an electric motor, allowing the tail boom to be
unplugged.  Still, the pieces cannot be backpacked.  Personally, I don't think
the Air Scout could be, either, despite the description in the game manual,
because too many of those pieces are of weird shapes.

     The helicopter can be loaded onto a standard flatbed trailer, and has
two removable wheels that attach to the rear struts for the skids, just aft of
the center of gravity.  Then, by pulling down on the tail boom to lift the
front end of the skids off the ground, the helicopter can be pushed or pulled
up a loading ramp, or be rolled just about anywhere on flat ground.  Not as
good as the theoretically man-portable disassembled Air Scout, but given that
the Exec 162F is much more versatile when assembled, it's still a viable
alternative vehicle for the Morrow Project.
