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Moving into Helicopters from Fixed Wing - What's different

Thank you for the reports. A few general fixed wing pilot questions:

Why are people so keen on the Robinsons as the calendar life limits seems to be a huge pain? The advantage of the Robinson designs seem to be rather high cruise speeds compared to other piston helicopters (probably due to the overall shape) but anything else?

What is helicopter maintenance like in this segment? Is it bascially like fixed wing with the possibility to run parts on condition, some pilot owner maintenance etc. or it it more like jet maintenance without much flexibility and associated prices?

Can you land next to your house or similar? With 75kt cruise going places is probably not so great so I assume having many local options is key to have fun with a helicopter.

www.ing-golze.de
EDAZ

Why are people so keen on Robinsons? Beats me. Comes down to the “Robinson versus Enstrom” battle that happened before my time I think. Certainly the throttle governor helped them win that battle by deskilling slightly.

Maintenance – depends which segment of the segment. Maintenance in my ex-military machine is not too bad, perhaps comparable to a complex retractable single engine fixed wing. Buy a half million pound R66 and you’re in for some very big bills indeed, not to mention the 12 year life problem.

You can land anywhere with land owners permission outside of a built up area. I keep mine at home, and can fly completely unrestricted. If you park on farmland, you are technically limited to 28 days per year- if anyone counts.

What makes helicopters so fantastic is the time saving. I can fly from home- no need to drive to the airfield. If I’m siting at an airfield having a coffee with a fixed wing pilot, I can stay at my table 10 minutes longer than them before walking to the aircraft. They have to taxy, power check, etc – I just start up and take off – literally 3-4 minutes from start to airborne. And the real saving is if you can land at the hotel, go-kart track, field, or garden of where you are going – no need to find an airport and get a taxi. Can be a real winner.

The helicopter can also be much faster in circuits and landing. Airfields like shoreham have a “south east corner join” – you just bang straight in under circuit traffic and land. At Redhill I’ve overtaken a twin on the base leg, whizzed down final at 100 knots, hovered, turned around, and watched him land.

EGKL, United Kingdom
Why are people so keen on the Robinsons as the calendar life limits seems to be a huge pain? The advantage of the Robinson designs seem to be rather high cruise speeds compared to other piston helicopters (probably due to the overall shape) but anything else?

What is helicopter maintenance like in this segment? Is it bascially like fixed wing with the possibility to run parts on condition, some pilot owner maintenance etc. or it it more like jet maintenance without much flexibility and associated prices?

Can you land next to your house or similar? With 75kt cruise going places is probably not so great so I assume having many local options is key to have fun with a helicopter.

It’s a trade-off, the Robinson series have lower yearly running costs and predictable rebuild costs at a known time. I was looking at a freshly rebuilt one with Zero hours on the Datcon and the job is remarkable. Even all the interior comes in a kit to make it just like new. The R44 is fast and does the most for the least amount of money. If you read into the accident statistics, it would make you sit up straight, the attached link here is pretty sobering reading. LA Times Article

Maintenence is strict, and little is on condition. It’s like having a Cessna and following all the manufacturer’s recommendations. On ours, the next parts are not due for 600hrs and the next annual should be a light 2-3k affair.

You can land next to your house, but site selection has much more to consider than you have probably given thought to. Where I am, change of use comes into it so it’s not just the feasibility of the site it is planning laws too. We have established use, for helicopter landings on our family farm so that is an option for me. Keeping the S300C long term is probably not a runner. We are planning to get a turbine at some stage and split the costs with one other person, which makes more sense than a R44 if you are a good people person.

Last Edited by WilliamF at 08 Jun 21:22
Buying, Selling, Flying
EISG, Ireland

Sebastian_G wrote:

Can you land next to your house or similar? With 75kt cruise going places is probably not so great so I assume having many local options is key to have fun with a helicopter.

I suppose this depends hugely where you live and how big your property is. I’d say 99% of people can not land next to or on their house for various reasons, at least in Europe, maybe a few more can do stuff like this in the US but generally, there are loads of stumbling blocks trying to operate a helo in our overcrowded society.

- Size: Few of us have gardens or plot sizes large enough to land any helo on it. It is not just the question of the plot being large enough to fit the rotor diameter plus a few meters, you need an area to maneuver. Someone once told me 100×100m of obstacle free area is about the minimum you should look at. Practically nobody outside a farmer has this kind of space, certainly no in urban areas.
- Noise/envy/Nimbys: In the day and age where even playing children end up in front of courts because they are being kids and produce noise, in the day and age where people will attack everything under the sun which produces the least bit of noise, operating a helo anywhere it can be heard is simply an illusion. Again, it may work on estates which are big enough such as large farms, but even there you will have neighbours and villages e.t.c around who will fight anyone trying to do something like this. Heck, even stations of rescue helicopters are often subject to noise complaints and court battles.
- Germany (and some other countries) still have laws about “Flugplatzzwang” (obligation to use an airport) which precludes any private use of helos outside airports. Yes, in theory you may operate into private plots with the sanction of the land owner, but see above: It is not only one land owner you need to convince but his whole surrounding with it. Any form of built up area won’t work and there is not a lot left which is not built up these days or used fo agricultural purposes which preclude landings.

I once talked to a Huey pilot of the German Air Force and his take was that the best organisation to fly choppers in are rescue or the airforce, where you do get to land in all sorts of places and have others organize the bureaucracy for it. Private use of helos for the purpose of landing places an airplane can’t land at is mostly an illusion in our overcrowded and tight world.

LSZH(work) LSZF (GA base), Switzerland

Having been fired up by WilliamF I thought I would have a look at what was involved in having an ULM helicopter ( section 6 of the ULM categories here)
We have a member of the club who owns one.
It appears that whilst you have some of the advantages of the ULM system, one of those advantages is not significantly lower cost, at around €300 – €350 per hour.
Maintenance means regular trips to the manufacturer or a specialist.

France

Someone once told me 100×100m of obstacle free area is about the minimum you should look at.

Changing that to say 25m x 150m and you understand why the Super Cub is known as the poor man’s helicopter:)

Oxford (EGTK), United Kingdom

Landing area is basically a formula of risk.

I have a little field that’s 200 × 75m. it’s an absolute luxury and I can land in absolutely any wind direction. It’s unsuitable for STOL fixed wing due to tall obstructions all around. However for 2 years I operated an Enstrom without that luxury – and had ‘one way in, one way out’ corridor and put down into a horse sand school. (maybe 30 × 15 meter). It was never a problem.

The actual “Landing pad” can comfortably be 30m square (with obstructions – i.e. fences), if it has a nice unobstructed approach. Tighter than that focuses the mind a bit. I think of it in terms of “Rotor Diameters” – I like to have a full diameter away from stuff if possible.

You could do a ’towering landing and takeoff" which means descending whilst hovering. This greatly increases the risk profile and an engine or tail rotor failure will probably kill you. We have to practice these, but I avoid them at all costs.

One of the challenges is reconnaissance of a landing site. Google earth is just too flat – doesn’t show hills, power lines, phone wires, or trees properly. These are all absolutely fine if you know where they are, but you would not want to be surprised by them.

Landing strategy is important. I’ve seen several pilots doing “lingering landings” as I call them. High hovers or very slow creeping approaches because they are nervous of the landing site. I prefer to carefully research the site, then overfly it low (but at speed), and then make a sensible standard approach that doesn’t involve lingering in the “Avoid Curve”.

EGKL, United Kingdom

On the topic of confined areas, one thing that is totally different to fixed-wing is this. You could have a paddock adjacent to your house of a decent size, and use that as your aiming point for the transition to the hover. Then hover taxi slowly at a 6ft height from that point into a much tighter location. Even with my lowly heli experience, it’s possible to hover taxi and park on a very small pad with the tail rotor about 4m from obstacles. There are lots of people with a clear field adjacent to their property, and you never actually need to touch down in it, just use it to get into a safe hover. Think of it as a two area landing. One to transition, one to park up.

Buying, Selling, Flying
EISG, Ireland

Yes agree completely :-)

My military instructors are very fussy about hover height. I get bollocked at 6 foot. 4 foot is their target! I guess it all depends how the helicopter responds to an engine failure in the hover.

….. so this leaves me wondering why I see SO MANY helicopters (Robinsons) with instructors on board hovering at 12-20 feet!

EGKL, United Kingdom

carlmeek wrote:

I have a little field that’s 200 × 75m. it’s an absolute luxury and I can land in absolutely any wind direction. It’s unsuitable for STOL fixed wing due to tall obstructions all around. However for 2 years I operated an Enstrom without that luxury – and had ‘one way in, one way out’ corridor and put down into a horse sand school. (maybe 30 × 15 meter). It was never a problem.

On a property like that, wonderful. Most properties, particularly in built areas, are way smaller. I was musing about it once… in a moment of delusion. My roof is 10×5 m flat, there is one adjacent to it which is the same area but 1 m higher, then another and another. And there is a chimney at the end of it about 2m high. My garden is 20×10m but with immediate obstacles up to 10 m.

One guy who flies some helo of the size of a R22 (don’t know the type) says he could in theory land there “easily” as the approach end on the side away from the chimney has relatively few obstacles. I did not let him try though, as I still need that chimney…

And apart from that, I wish to keep some sort of relations short of warfare with my neighbours. They go ballistic regularly over a guy who owns a Harley and has to push it down our street in order to stop them from lynching him. (ok, he goes to work at 4am, but still). Imagine someone with a helo disturbing their afternoon nap and they’ be out there with pitchforks or lawyers in a jiffy…

Obviously, if you live in the countryside and the next neighbour is 5 miles away, maybe this works. Even then I’d be suspicious here, seeing that even glider strips get noise complaints from people further away than that.

But let’s assume you can actually do it and the neighbours accept it? Then where do you fly to other than airports? Other farmers who love whirlies? I mean, isn’t the illusion of those things that you can take off anywhere and land anywhere and so basically take the thing to work or so? I just can’t imagine that happening unless you really live in an isolated place which even the environmentalists find too bleak to bother knowing about….

I mean I really love the idea and I know it does happen some times. Near us in Germany, a farmer is running a lovely little farm strip for decades, I fondly recall his father who founded it. Have not seen many others though. And as much as I like them, they are quite loud in comparison to most other flying things.

LSZH(work) LSZF (GA base), Switzerland
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