Many remarkable people lead lives that go largely unrecorded, and in the UK that is largely true of Ken Wallis: a pioneer of what are called gyrocopters here, autogyros in the US. He never really got the aircraft off the ground in terms of manufacture, unlike Igor Benson who at least produced plans for a kit-built type that consistently sold (and still does) from the 1950s onward. Electrification, interestingly, sees this concept being revisited widely if only for its over-arching simplicity.
Ken Wallis himself flew nearly three dozen missions in Wellington bombers during WW2, but beside this built or raced cars, boats, motorcycles and aeroplanes when he was not promoting this enduring form of aircraft.
I've only really one thing in common with him ~ dandruff on the shoulders of giants as I am ~ and that is the fact that when confronted with fitting two engines in place of one, we both came up with the same solution viz. if you're mounting motors in a co-axial configuration it is easier to do so front-to-front than back-to-back.
Whilst on the subject of design too, the gyrocopter is an object lesson in why ~ as in my beloved flat-cat ~ centres of thrust are ideally aligned with those of gravity and drag. In many gyrocopters (autogyros) the thrust-line is higher than the latter and whilst it tends to push the nose down, it is prevented from doing so by lift from the rotor that pulls the nose up.
If the rotor fails in this task ~ due lack of airspeed or negative g-force ~ the engine wins out and drives the aircraft into a powered dive of the sort that has killed any number of pilots.
But don't let that put you off.
I recall seeing three aircraft crash with fatal results at flying shows, one involving a gyrocopter... all aircraft bite, which is why I do boats.
