Goodyear GA-400R Gizmo

The Goodyear GA-400R Gizmo was a one-man helicopter proposed in the 1950s for liaison and observation work. It was the third in a series of light helicopters that Goodyear began developing in 1954, and it was built to be as light and simple as possible: a welded aluminium tube airframe, rotor blades with wooden cores and fibreglass skins, rubber belts in place of a gearbox, and an ordinary Johnson outboard marine engine for power. It showed very low autorotation sink rates. First test flights took place at Akron, Ohio in 1954, and the United States Navy tested it at Patuxent River in 1957. It never went into production, and Goodyear gave the prototype to the EAA museum in 1966.