Wing Commander Ken Wallis is a legend in his own lifetime,his career reads like a whos-who in aviation and automobile engineering,most of all his exploits with small gyroplane development are centred around his home in Norfolk where at Reymerston Hall he still flies these tiny machines.
After leaving the R.A.F Ken wanted to develop his designs and actively demonstrated them throughout the UK,his party piece was to trim the machine for level flight and with arms in the air swing himself sideways as the gyroplane just hovered in mid air,despite his tender age he still holds his pilots licence and flies from a tiny strip within the grounds at Reymerston.Open house, usually co-incides with a nearby gyroplane event that is held most years at nearby Swanton Morley airfield,then Ken opens his small but crammed hangar of development machines,these include the famous 'Little Nellie' used in a James Bond film many years ago.The uses to which these aircraft have been used include aerial photography,police work operating from small fields,research,mapping old Roman strongholds such as the Lunt Roman fort at Baginton,Coventry,Fitted with sophisticated equipment, these machines can do the job at a fifth of the price of larger and more expensive helicopters.
Ken has given numerous talks on gyroplanes throughout the country and his enthusiasm holds no bounds,there have been many appearances on television including one at the 'Blue Peter' studios in London,he is the worlds leading authority on these machines which in his own words he calls,the flying motorcycles of the sky,I think that the autogyro which was originally developed by a Spanish engineer, Juan D La Cierva would have been very proud to have seen the developments in latter years of these small machines,Cierva was sadly killed in a Douglas DC-2 airliner at Croydon.
Benson in America designed and built some of the first sporting autogyro's from which the Ken Wallis designs were first inspired.
Ken Wallis holds a rightful place in our hall of fame here.
Wing Commander K H Wallis MBE, DEng (hc), CEng, FRAeS, FSETP, Ph.D (hc), RAF (Ret'd) Some of the fleet of the Wallis Autogyro line seen here in the grounds of Reymerston Hall,Norfolk.
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