The Amax Eagle is an Australian

autogyro An autogyro (from Greek and , "self-turning"), gyroscope, gyrocopter or gyroplane, is a class of rotorcraft that uses an unpowered rotor in free autorotation to develop lift. A gyroplane "means a rotorcraft whose rotors are not engine-d ...

that was designed and produced by

Amax Engineering Amax Engineering was an Australian aircraft manufacturer based in Donvale, Victoria, a suburb of Melbourne. When it was in business, the company specialized in the design and manufacture of kit aircraft for amateur construction. The company d ...

Donvale, Victoria Donvale is a suburb of Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, east of Melbourne's Central Business District, located within the City of Manningham local government area A local government area (LGA) is an administrative division of a country t ...

, introduced in the early 1990s. Now out of production, when it was available the aircraft was supplied as a kit for amateur construction.Purdy, Don: ''AeroCrafter - Homebuilt Aircraft Sourcebook, Fifth Edition'', page 318. BAI Communications, 15 July 1998.

Design and development

The Eagle was designed to comply with amateur-built aircraft rules. It features a single main rotor, a single-seat open cockpit without a windshield,

tricycle landing gear Tricycle gear is a type of aircraft undercarriage, or ''landing gear'', that is arranged in a tricycle fashion. The tricycle arrangement has one or more nose wheels in a single front undercarriage and two or more main wheels slightly aft of th ...

without

wheel pants An aircraft fairing is a structure whose primary function is to produce a smooth outline and reduce drag.Crane, Dale: ''Dictionary of Aeronautical Terms, Third Edition'', page 206. Aviation Supplies & Academics Inc, Newcastle Washington, 1997. ...

and a four-cylinder, liquid-cooled,

four-stroke A four-stroke (also four-cycle) engine is an internal combustion (IC) engine in which the piston completes four separate strokes while turning the crankshaft. A stroke refers to the full travel of the piston along the cylinder, in either directio ...

, single-ignition Subaru EA81

automotive engine There are a wide variety of propulsion systems available or potentially available for automobiles and other vehicles. Options included internal combustion engines fueled by petrol, diesel, propane, or natural gas; hybrid vehicles, plug-in hybr ...

pusher configuration In aeronautical and naval engineering, pusher configuration is the term used to describe a drivetrain of air- or watercraft with propulsion device(s) after the engine(s). This is in contrast to the more conventional tractor configuration, wh ...

. The aircraft

fuselage The fuselage (; from the French language, French ''fuselé'' "spindle-shaped") is an aircraft's main body section. It holds Aircrew, crew, passengers, or cargo. In single-engine aircraft, it will usually contain an Aircraft engine, engine as wel ...

is made from welded

4130 steel 41xx steel is a family of SAE steel grades, as specified by the Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE). Alloying elements include chromium and molybdenum, and as a result these materials are often informally referred to as chromoly steel (common va ...

tubing with some aluminum parts. Its two-bladed rotor has a diameter of . The aircraft has a typical empty weight of and a gross weight of , giving a useful load of . With full fuel of the payload for the pilot and baggage is . The standard day, sea level, no wind, take off with a engine is and the landing roll is . The manufacturer estimated the construction time from the supplied kit as 100 hours. The Eagle was later developed into the Eagle TT ("Tall Tail"). The Eagle TT has higher landing gear allowing the engine to be placed on the vertical

center of gravity In physics, the center of mass of a distribution of mass in space (sometimes referred to as the barycenter or balance point) is the unique point at any given time where the weighted relative position of the distributed mass sums to zero. For ...

which eliminates pitch changes with throttle application.

Operational history

The Eagle won ''Most Outstanding Design'' at the 1992 Popular Rotorcraft Association annual convention in

Brookville, Ohio Brookville is a small city in northwestern Montgomery County, Ohio, United States. It is a suburb of Dayton. The population was 5,989 at the 2020 census. History Brookville had its first pioneers around 1814. Brookville was platted in 1850, ...

, United States. The design is widely employed in Australia for cattle mustering.

Specifications (Eagle)

References

{{Amax Engineering aircraft

Eagle Eagle is the common name for the golden eagle, bald eagle, and other birds of prey in the family of the Accipitridae. Eagles belong to several groups of Genus, genera, some of which are closely related. True eagles comprise the genus ''Aquila ( ...

1990s Australian sport aircraft 1990s Australian ultralight aircraft Homebuilt aircraft Single-engined pusher autogyros

Design and development

Operational history

Specifications (Eagle)

See also

References