Evink lives out aviation dream

Dating back to his high school days, Dave Evink has had a love for flying. One particular kind of flying in particular intrigued him.

Anyone who has seen a unique machine cruising through the skies of Stevens County has seen Dave Evink living out his aviation dreams in his gyrocopter.

“The official (Federal Aviation Administration) definition is gyroplane,” said Evink, a 1967 Morris High School graduate who lives in Hancock. “I’ve always been interested in them, even way back in high school. You’d see them in magazines like “Popular Mechanics.”

Evink now flies one and he’s hoping to use it to build up a little business shooting aerial photographs of land, farmsteads and businesses.

“It’s the perfect machine for it,” he said. “It’s just fun getting up in the air, and the visibility is just tremendous. It’s all wide open.”

Back when Evink first discovered them, the gyrocopters were smaller and probably less sophisticated, but that didn’t dissuade his interest. He studied for and earned his license to pilot fixed-wing aircraft in 1976. While that kind of flying was great it wasn’t all he wanted to experience as a pilot.

“I kind of kept thinking about it,” Evink said with a smile.

It was at an air show in Oshkosh, Wis., about seven years ago that Evink not only got to see a gyrocopter up close, he got to take a ride in one.

“Boy, that was fun,” Evink said. “They’re really nice machines. Then, I found out a guy by Sauk Centre had one. I stopped in.”

In fact, the guy was selling one he had built. The machine has a 30-foot rotor powered by a 130-horsepower Subaru engine. Two people can ride in it, and it can reach speeds of about 60 to 70 miles per hour and heights up to 10,000 feet, although Evink said optimal flying is between 500 and 1,000 feet.

Evink spent about a week talking with the owner, who always stored the well-made gyrocopter in a hangar. He then went to his wife, Melinda, to get her thoughts.

“She pretty much said, ‘At your age, if you’re going to do it you’d better do it.’ ” Evink said with a laugh. “I never thought it would really happen, but I thought this man is close by and he gave me a fair price.”

And then Evink heeded the advice he now gives other people thinking about piloting a gyrocopter: “Get instruction,” he said, noting that he got together with a pilot in Arkansas to learn the fine points of flying the machine. “You have to unlearn things. It’s a different type of flying.”

The photographic aspects of Evink’s hobby were already established. He took aerial photos from fixed-wing aircraft for a couple of years after he earned his pilots license. In 2008, he started his photo business using a 10-megapixel single-lens reflex camera. The gyrocopter can’t hover but can be slowed to speeds that allow Evink to shoot photographs by hand.

“I do enjoy taking photographs,” he said. “It’s a good reason to go up.”

As if, after all these years, Evink needs a reason.

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