Patent ID: 7677492

Claim:
An autogyro rotor aircraft, comprising: a fuselage; a power source mounted to the fuselage; a thrust device coupled to the power source for providing forward thrust to the aircraft; a rotor mounted above the fuselage for providing lift during takeoff and landing, the rotor having blades extending outward from a hub, each of the blades being twistable about a pitch axis to vary a collective pitch from a minimum pitch to a maximum pitch, the rotor being operatively connected to the power source for rotation only prior to take-off and freewheeling after take-off; a collective pitch assembly mounted to the rotor that moves in an advancing direction to increase the collective pitch and in a decreasing direction to decrease the collective pitch; a mechanical pitch controller operatively coupled to the collective pitch assembly for automatically increasing and decreasing the collective pitch in a selected relationship to the rotational speed of the rotor while freewheeling; a lockout member cooperatively engaged with the pitch controller and having a locked position that prevents movement of the collective pitch assembly from the minimum pitch while the aircraft is on the ground and the rotor is being prerotated by the power source prior to its takeoff RPM, the lockout member being releasable to allow the collective pitch assembly to move in the advancing direction toward the maximum pitch in response to disengagement of the power source from the rotor; and wherein the pitch controller is free to increase and decrease the pitch between the minimum and the maximum pitches continuously while the rotor is autorotating after take-off for a duration of the flight.