How about this for the family car? The literature claims it "will allow their owners to keep their aircraft in their home garage and take-off from a landing pad in their yard for personal travel." Sounds good to me.
This was the only autogiro aircraft I saw that looked useful in any sort of practical day to day way. It has a reasonable useful load and enclosed cockpit with modern avionics. The turbine engine turns a propeller that pushes the plane. A clutch on the rotor winds it up beyond flying speed for vertical takeoff. The pilot releases the clutch before takeoff. Under way, the rotor turns freely.
The man I spoke with claimed that an engine failure on takeoff would result in nothing more than a landing directly back on the takeoff spot.
One of the limiting factors of all rotorcraft is retreating rotor stall. When the plane moves forward it robs the retreating side of the rotor of speed. The Carter overcomes this by adding a wing to some models. The combination of wing and autogiro makes the aircraft safe for vertical takeoff, landing, and cruise flight.
Of course, it was in a tent. It wasn't on Aeroshell square. I didn't see it fly, if it flies, which I doubt. The aerial photos in the literature show dummies in the cockpit. Not a good sign. Maybe they'll make me wrong.
