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Fun Flying: ‘Castle Spotting’ in a Scottish Autogyro

A tandem gyroplane’s front seat provides great recreational flying scenery.

Urquhart Castle in the Scottish Highlands looks great on an AutoGyro fly-by. [Photo: Dean Siracusa]
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Key Takeaways:

  • Texas pilot and CEO Dean Siracusa experienced a unique and memorable flight in an open-cockpit Autogyro over the scenic Scottish Highlands.
  • He found Autogyros offer a distinct flying experience, prioritizing rotor speed, demonstrating inherent safety with controlled autorotation during engine-out scenarios, and providing extreme maneuverability.
  • Siracusa was so impressed that he sees an Autogyro as a potential future "leisure craft" for local recreational flying due to its enjoyment and fuel efficiency.
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Ask any pilot and they’ll tell you of those rare flights that came together perfectly to create an aviation memory that will last until they’ve flown west. Sometimes these flights are just meant to be another routine hour on the Hobbs, but then something clicks, and magic happens.

For one Texas-based fixed-wing pilot, flying an open-cockpit tandem Autogyro from the front seat over the gorgeous scenery of Scotland turned a basic introductory flight into one of these special moments.

Dan Pimentel

Dan Pimentel is an instrument-rated private pilot and former airplane owner who has been flying since 1996. As an aviation journalist and photographer, he has covered all aspects of the general and business aviation communities for a long list of major aviation magazines, newspapers and websites. He has never met a flying machine that he didn’t like, and has written about his love of aviation for years on his Airplanista blog. For 10 years until 2019, he hosted the popular ‘Oshbash’ social media meetup events at EAA AirVenture Oshkosh.

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