I’ve easily spent 25 years making up excuses as to why I couldn’t have a helicopter, or a licence to fly one. Once I got over those fabricated mental constructs, that usually centre on helicopters being too expensive/dangerous/slow then things moved pretty swiftly. Most people progress down the path of a trial lesson, do some flying, then do the exams, finally get a licence, rent a helicopter, then maybe buy one and then try to figure out the maintenance. My business partner and I did it in reverse.
We started with the maintenance, as we have a helicopter engineer with decades of experience working in house. We asked him what should we buy, and he said the Hughes/Schweizer S300C or the R44. For its three-bladed fully articulated head, fuel injection and abundant power the 300C seemed like the best option. Sure the R44 would have been faster, but it was more fuel burn and 2x the price. Then we started to figure out a way of learning to fly safely and that’s where the differences start. What’s different so far:
Type Specifics If you bought a nice Cessna 152 and rocked up to your local school they would probably be happy to teach you to fly in it. Types are common and instructors are freely available. Try the same with a helicopter, and you get wide and varied answers ranging from the polite letdown… to the what the hell have you wasted your money on that for. Some of the people we rang were genuinely helpful, some genuinely scared us away. We wanted to learn somewhere commutable from Yorkshire, ideally at our base but we were willing to compromise. If you are contemplating such a move, don’t underestimate the hurdle here of finding a willing DTO with instructors with the type endorsement you need. If you want to please everyone, maybe the R44 is a better choice.
Insurance Insurance for big consideration, the best quotes so far are from Visicover, and it’s about €7.5k a year for ab initio with betterment and a €5k excess. That’s a bit of a shocker when you see it first.
Hangarage Logistically you need to have some way of moving the helicopter in and out of the hangar. It’s not like an aeroplane. We got a hydraulic trolley which we can use with our tug truck from the seller. The trolley would need to travel with it, or we would have to investigate some ground handling wheels if we base it temporarily elsewhere. There is no room to bring the ground wheels or covers with you in the 300C unless we use the side pannier tray. If you were to leave it outside the odd summer night might be ok, but it really needs to be inside. A helicopter should present in such condition that it is difficult to determine its age, that’s the accepted standard for them. Leaving it outside with the blades tied seems like only a short term possibility. Hangarage for a two-blade helicopter is easier than a three-blade and hangar rash could be both expensive and dangerous compared to a fixed-wing.
Community Size It seems to be about 10:1 ratio of fixed-wing pilots to rotary pilots. So far everyone seems to know each other, the levels of integrity seem pretty high on the maintenance side and there is a lot of pride at stake. People seem to know each helicopter, and what’s maybe good or bad about them becomes evident pretty quickly. Group ownership seems rarer too. There are enthusiast guys who like the raw flying experience, and there are corporate guys who can work miracles in marginal weather. The pilots from the power line inspection flights are very friendly and will chat freely about their experiences. You quickly realise there is a world of aviation going on outside of the airports that a fixed-wing person would frequent e.g. there were 70 helicopters at the races yesterday at Cheltenham.
As the training kicks off I’ll flesh out this thread with any other differences that become apparent. We have completed the 4 exams required and the PPL (A) allows us 6hrs credit off the 45hr course. Because I have a wife and 2 children, I think this kind of flying where you get away for a good day on your own away from it all is quite compelling. Opinions differ on this but I have no plans in the next 5 years to be bundling the family off in a GA aeroplane and touring. I want to go flying to learn new things, see new places and meet new people rather than be a superhero dad in the cockpit looking after everyone. With the right instructor, helicopter mountain flying and night flying are options that we can explore after the licence. It also seems that the prices of helicopters didn’t go stupid in the last few years so there is value there, albeit very outside the box thinking for someone flying fixed-wing for 28 years. I’ve studied the past efforts of a few people I know, who tried to get into the helicopter scene this way and didn’t make it. I am certain with good maintenance, continuing instruction and a good starting helicopter we will be successful at it.
You will love it.
After a decade of fixed wing I bought a 10 pack of lessons on a turbine enstrom and did a solo circuit after 5 hours. I then bought my own piston Enstrom and received lessons on it. I now fly an amazing gazelle and never stop smiling.
I still fly 3:1 ratio fixed wing to helicopter, I fly Aeros, IR(R), instruct others…. But the helicopter is my mistress and the one that both makes me smile and also gives the most joy to others I fly with.
My advice to anyone who starts now is to seek something that isn’t a Robinson, ideally a Cabri to learn on. I wouldn’t inflict the pain of a manual throttle on anyone, after 2 years flying with one I was gagging for a governor and was lucky enough to be able to go turbine instead.
Power is your friend; low power can put you in sticky situations.
Interesting thread that I will sure follow 
I think Matthieu de Quillacq incorporates what I see in heli flying: Total (illusory) freedom in a small flying machine you are part of. Paid him a visit in Barcelonnette a few years ago, and his passion and dedication almost had me hooked. Flying a heli under the 600kg UL regime in France makes the proposition very attractive. And Matthieu’s flying is well… let’s label it as „open“ 
This is what heli flying should IMHO look like
I came home mesmerized… lasted a full week
My friend Charly also displays the attraction through multiple mountain flights Charly CH-7
All this had me think a lot… I came to the conclusion that there is a time and a place where one meets the limits of his wallet, age, and environment (as in family).
@WilliamF enjoy the spinning world
When I’d taken my PPL in the early 90’s, I thought rotary was the logical next step. And boy, did I get hooked. Once I started with that, I completely lost interest in FW. It’s so much more fun and challenging. But an engine failure close to my checkride on the Schweizer 300 made me take pause and kind of step away from aviation for a few years.
Today I find myself in almost the same situation again. The interest for rotary has come back and I’d like to finish the rating. I have always had an obsession with the MD500/Hughes 500 series (I blame it on Magnum P.I.). I would love to afford to fly one of those one day. Also, as I get older, the low and slow thing is starting to appeal to me again (I can totally see why people go for the Carbon Cub stuff etc). The reality is that I’ve spent my whole flying ownership upgrading to more and more capable traveling machines and the reality is that very rarely do you use those capabilities – maybe a few times a year do I go on 300+nm trips where they make sense. And in lieu, you give up all the smaller, lower, slower fun flights that have no clear destination, because it doesn’t make sense to fire up a big twin to do those.
A helicopter would fulfill a lot of those needs. Also, as much as I enjoy the procedure of IFR flying, I can’t say I really enjoy being in bumpy clouds with no visuals for extended time periods. With a helicopter you don’t need any of that an it has to be really, really bad before you can’t continue VFR.
I will be following this thread!
Zero interest in helicopters.
The are loud, ugly, slow and expensive.
Actually, when I am at an airfield (preflighting the aircraft or so) and there is a heli around, I actually get annoyed by the noise.
Thanks, @carlmeek and @AdamFrisch it would be great someday to get into a turbine helicopter. My desired mission is to get really good at the craft of helicopter flying. That in itself is a totally different mission than a fixed-wing mindset where people are deeply concerned with having specific flight plan speeds, useful loads and capabilities. I’ve never had my life together to such a point where I could do IFR flying the way I wanted to, despite having passed the FAA exam and done much of the training. The common thread with the fixed-wing flying I have done is an obsession with landing new places off the beaten track. I was able to express that through the seaplane and the various other aeroplanes I’ve brought into lots of farm fields, forgotten airfields, beaches you name it.
Equipment is only ever part of the equation. I liken flying a lot of things to one of my other hobbies, photography. The camera set up that took the cover photo for Vogue magazine 15 years ago could probably be bought for 2-300 quid. It’s probably still capable of jaw-dropping images but people think the world has moved on. In reality, if you could use this piece of equipment well to manage light, composition, flash really well then you could outperform someone who just bought a new top of the range mirrorless camera.
@Dan I bet your friend in that CH7 is one hell of a pilot. It’s a great video.
In another life, if I got into helicopters, I would buy a Gazelle and get a military instructor to teach me to fly it, and skip the “Robinson sewing machine stage” completely.
I did the transition about 14 years ago. It started with “let’s see what it’s like to fly a heli” and I got hooked. It took me about 40 hours to pass my PPL, maybe it could have been done faster but I wasn’t in a great hurry. I love flying them but it isn’t of much practical use unless you live in the depths of the countryside or something.
I’ve kept kind of current since, enough not to forget completely anyway.
Despite what everyone says, the R44 is a very nice machine to fly. Avoid the Cabri like the plague – it’s horrible, like trying to fly a tractor. Underpowered and the controls are impossibly heavy, despite its tiny size. I wouldn’t fly an R22, just too close to the edge for my liking.
Of course if you can afford a Gazelle or an Mi8 or a Chinook, go for it. But not many people can.
I have done 5h in the R22s at Elstree, I hated every second of it: two propellers and none of them is pulled toward my direction of travel, no thanks !
I’ d be more interested in Helos if they could be used more freely. Also with my weight the usual suspects won’t do, R44 or similar is the minimum.
So far I had 2 chances to try a helo. One was a Hiller UH9, Franklin engine ages ago. I liked it a lot. It’s got 3 seats, is quite stable to fly and also has “normal” stick rather than the Robinson’s weird controls. The other was a short and very inofficial hop in a Huey. That one left a lasting impression. Lovely, rock stable and still quite agile to fly.
I think if I ever got into flying helos I’d look out for a Hiller, they are reasonably priced (for a helo) and look and feel like a small Alouette 2 or pretty similar than a Bell 47. No way I could ever afford a Huey or a Lama, otherwise those would be really cool, particularly the latter in the mountains.
Friend of mine used to fly a MI2 ages ago around here. Lovely bird, did attract a lot of attention though.
But I’d be mostly interested if I could keep it on my roof (flat roof but on the tiny side) and use it to fly freely to wherever I need to go. Alas, that does not really work here, where you need individual permits for just about everywhere and are restricted to aerodromes otherwise. And my neighbours would go ape. But it’s a nice idea anyway.
