> There are old pilots, there are bold pilots, but no old and bold pilots.

So they always say.
But, there is at least one.
Or there was at least until a few years ago.
At that stage he'd been flying for 70+ years - much of his early flights in
auto-gyros.

He achieved it this way, as Carl suggests

> First become a master of a standard flying machine, then think about
> modifications.

But in a manner that few on earth have managed.
He was recognised with an award also given to Hughes and Lindberg.
He flew mail autogyros off rooftops in the 1930s and was still flying his
own light airfcraft sometime this century when I discovered his name in a US
flying club newsletter. He's probably dead now - but his story is among the
most amazing.

I say 'old and bold' as, amongst many other things, he recounts regularly
flying loops and rolls in an autogyro at airshows. The only one who did, he
says. Indeed. That's the exception that proves the rule - a good way to die
if you are not the best in the world at it - as he probably was.

[A good trick is to dive an AG and then pull out too steeply so the rotor
cone inverts excessively and the blades strike your tail assembly. Having no
rotor (and or no tail assembly) makes an AG descent "tricky".  Time for a
ballistic chute. No rotor makes an AG ballistic chute more viable I imagine
:-).]

I'd love to leave you the joy of tracking him down from the above
information alone, but a good summary to get you going is here


http://www.historynet.com/captain-john-miller-test-pilot-of-the-autogiro-and-the-grumman-j2f-duck.htm

      Russell
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