This April, mailman Mr. Doug Hughes attemted to deliver mail to the US Congress using a gyrocopter. He got arrested, of course. In all news about this, the type Mr. Hughes choose for his action is never mentioned. As he also negelected to write the registration on the tailfin after marking it very properly as US United States Postal Service craft, I have no chance to find out the type by myself. Contrary to Mr. Hughes, I need to properly register the picture for my collection. It is from the Washington Post.
Can you help? Thank you!
Regards, RT
By: J Boyle - 10th August 2015 at 23:42
I was expecting our knowledgeable forum member Mr. J Boyle to be the expert in providing the answers, but am still waiting! :eagerness:
Don’t look at me!
To me. all non-enclosed seat types all look more or less alike….basically latter-day Bensons.
At our local field there is a fancy enclosed one. I tried to ask the owner a question but he didn’t seem too interested. He flies it a lot but never leaves the pattern. That might tell us something. 🙂
As a kid I wanted one, but in the 80s a friend was killed flying his (a low time pilot got into PIO and the blades hit the tail), so that rather cooled me on the concept.
Good to hear the guy got fired.
Yes, he can have a beef with the way the government does things, but to drag your employer into a pointless headline-making stunt is inexcusable for a government employee.
By: Newforest - 10th August 2015 at 15:55
I was expecting our knowledgeable forum member Mr. J Boyle to be the expert in providing the answers, but am still waiting! :eagerness:
By: Romantic Techno - 10th August 2015 at 10:44
Thank you for your answers. I am going to store the thing as “Hughes Gyrocopter” and hope good old Howard will not mind (watching from his cloud).
Regards, RT
By: Flying-A - 9th August 2015 at 00:58
WUSA-TV Channel 9, Washington, D.C., reported on 21 May 2015 that:
“The full charges against Hughes are one count of operating as an airman without an airman’s certificate, one count of violating registration requirements involving aircraft, three counts of violation of national defense airspace and one count of operating a vehicle falsely labeled as a postal carrier.”
I haven’t seen any reports as to the make and model of the gyrocopter, but whatever it is, it’s heavy enough to require registration and a pilot’s license.
That USPS emblem on the tail led to one of the charges against Hughes since the flight wasn’t an official mail delivery.
By the way, on 3 July 2015, WUSA-TV reported that Hughes had been fired by the USPS.
By: Newforest - 8th August 2015 at 19:55
After much searching, I can only find a description that his gyrocopter is ‘similar to a Bensen B-8 or Brock KB-2’. I could not find that Mr. Hughes held a current pilot’s licence.
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August 8, 2015 at 7:17 pm