Innovative 'Gazda' Provides A Link With The Past

Conspicuous at a show best known for displays of the latest helicopter hardware is one of the earliest rotorcraft -- the 1945 Gazda Model 100 Helicogyro

The brainchild of Antoine Gazda, an Austrian World War I flying ace who designed the Oerlikon 20mm cannon used by both sides in World War II, the Helicogyro employed a number of advanced features.

These included a variable-position tail rotor that became a pusher prop in forward flight, a single-wheel stick control and a Cierva-type rotor hub with hydraulic interconnect links between the blades.

In a preview of NOTAR technology, the two-place Gazda employed a primitive "exhaust jet" in lieu of a tail rotor, but this feature was quickly shelved for lack of usable power.

Welded steel tubing covered with fabric formed the Model 100's fuselage and main rotor blades, and a four-cylinder Franklin piston engine producing 130 hp provided motive force.

Gazda test flew the Model 100 several times with varying degrees of success, but "came to the realization that properly learning to fly a helicopter was beyond his capability," according to Hal Lemont, the engineer who did most of the aircraft's design work.

Friction with Gazda led Lemont to quit the program, and the aircraft was never placed in production.

Labeled an "enemy alien" by the United States, Gazda was interned for the duration of the war, and upon his death, the Model 100 was sold at auction to Vincent Colicci of Copters Unlimited in Rhode Island.

Carrol M. Voss, founder of AgRotors of Gettysburg, Penn., bought the Gazda from Colicci in 1960, and the machine is on permanent loan to Stanley Hiller's proposed aircaft museum in San Carlos, California.

By Paul Richfield