Bensen B-5

The Bensen B-5 was a small rotor kite developed by Igor Bensen in the United States in the 1950s and marketed for home building. Dubbed the "Gyro-Glider", it was the first of several such designs that would be sold by Bensen Aircraft Corporation over the following decades.

The B-5 was built around a cruciform frame of aluminum tube. A landing wheel was fitted to three points of this cross, and a mast was fitted above its centre to support the rotor hub. The fourth arm of the cross provided a mounting for a large, plywood fin and rudder, reminiscent of that of the Raoul Hafner's Rotachute that had shaped Bensen's thinking about rotor kite design.

The aircraft was intended to be towed behind a car, and could be built at home from easily obtained materials in about three to four weeks.

References

• Charnov, Bruce (2003). From Autogiro to Gyroplane: The Amazing Survival of an Aviation Technology. Praeger. pp. 225–26. 
• Bensen Aircraft Foundation