Pilot injured when gyrocopter hard lands at Tacoma Narrows Airport

Something that was supposed to go up in the air didn’t get far off the runway Saturday.

A gyrocopter — part airplane, part helicopter — hard-landed at Tacoma Narrows Airport in Gig Harbor.

The male pilot had a few abrasions, according to Pierce County Sheriff’s Department spokesman Ed Troyer. A female passenger was uninjured.

Gyrocopters, also called gyroplanes, have a large helicopter-like blade on top and a smaller push propeller on back of the craft. They are usually experimental and often home-built.

Photos from the scene show the both the rotor blades were severely bent and the propeller blades were broken off. The cockpit window was damaged.

The craft is a Calidus model made by AutoGyro of Germany. The flying machine can reach 100 miles per hour and it retails for $90,000.

“Looking like something out of a James Bond film, the Calidus is an aerial sports car,” says planeandpilotmag.com.

Gyrocopters made news in April 2015 when mailman Douglas Hughes flew one from Pennsylvania to the national mall in Washington, D.C. He landed on the lawn of the U.S. Capitol, making national news and raising the blood pressure of those who provide security in the capital’s no-fly zone.