Gyrocopters need a runup to take off
The Gyro Captain could not have taken off from inside the compound.
They can land in quite a short distance, but taking off requires speed.
Interesting, considering that his model didn't look all that impressive and wouldn't be superior to what we had by 1982.
If it's similar to those machines in Microsoft Flight Simulator X then I think I get the picture and he would require a lot of space to take off.
So he couldn't have escaped in the middle of the night unnoticed without them openning the gate again.
The scene gave me the impression that he could just take off from where it was like a chopper.
I suppose gyrocopters aren't that popular of a machine for the scriptwriters to fully understand.
The thing about gyrocopters is that the main rotor isn't powered. It requires forward speed produced by the propeller on the rear to get the overhead rotor spinning fast enough through autorotation to provide lift.
We do see the Captain spinning the top rotor by hand as you do on a gyrocopter, but that's just done to get things moving for when you start speeding up down the runway.
You're right tho, it's just handier script-wise to treat it as a miniature helicopter I suppose.