Twenty-three years ago, when the producers of the ABC-TV show Wide World of Flying came to me and proposed that I write and host a segment on transitioning from fixed wing to rotary wing, it took me all of three seconds to say yes.

The idea was to chronicle the entire rotary-wing learning process, from first hour of instruction through solo, and on to the private helicopter license; then, synthesize six months of flying and learning down to 20 minutes for television. Of course, my trainer was to be the world’s most popular two-place helicopter, the Robinson R22. As it happens, Robinson’s manufacturing facility at Torrance Airport in Southern California is only about 15 minutes from my home, so I would train in a succession of new Robinsons.

Just as with my preliminary fixed-wing education, I needed about 60 hours to finish the course, but when I was done, I was hooked on helicopters, just as I had become hooked on conventional airplanes a quarter-century earlier.

That show aired in 1989. Now, it’s 22 years later, and both Robinson and I are still flying high. (Okay, since they build helicopters, Robinson flies mostly low.) In 2008, Robinson delivered a total of 893 helicopters, compared to 733 Cessna piston products and 547 Cirrus aircraft.

Robinson Helicopters have consistently outpaced not just all helicopter manufacturers, but every other general aviation aircraft manufacturer, fixed or rotary wing, for several years. Today, Robinson builds more helicopters than all other manufacturers combined.

Best Seller
The Robinson story is another of those Hollywood-style “little guy takes on big guy and wins” scripts. Only in this case, it happens to be true. After Frank Robinson graduated from the University of Washington and did postgraduate work at the University of Wichita, he spent 17 years honing his skills at Cessna, Umbaugh, McCulloch, Kaman, Bell and Hughes Helicopters, where he gained a reputation as a tail-rotor expert.

Unable to rouse any interest from the majors in his concept for an inexpensive, two-seat helicopter, Frank resigned from Hughes in 1973 to start his own company. Working out of his home in Palos Verdes, Calif., the young engineer conceived and partially constructed the two-seat R22 in his garage. The new aircraft premiered in 1979, and quickly became the world’s best-selling helicopter.

But Frank had set his sights higher. Prior to 1993, the world’s most popular four-/five-seat helicopter was the Bell 206 Jet Ranger, an industry stalwart since the mid-’60s. With its Allison 250 turbine mill rated for 3,500 hours between overhauls, and a shaft horsepower of 317 to 420, the Jet Ranger seemed to have a lock on the market. The folks at Bell were confident little Robinson didn’t have the financial resources to produce and certify anything more than a two-seat utility/training helicopter.

In 1993, Bell and the rest of the industry learned otherwise. Robinson introduced the R44 Astro, a piston-powered chopper with four seats and a 1,000-pound useful load. It was, in most respects, an entry-level four-seater, powered by a carbureted, 205 hp Lycoming O-540, but, by far, the most significant difference between the R44 and the Bell 206 was the price. At just under $250,000, the new R44 cost barely a third of the tab for a new Jet Ranger.

It’s true, turbines are universally regarded as more reliable than piston powerplants, but even the biggest companies couldn’t ignore such hard, economic realities. To no one’s great surprise, the new R44 outsold the Jet Ranger from day one, no discredit to the Bell product, a simple function of price. It also didn’t hurt that the R44’s performance specs were very close to those of the Jet Ranger, while the Robinson’s operating costs were dramatically less.

If Bell truly believed Frank Robinson would stay out of the turbine business, they misjudged him again. After several years of development, Robinson certified the R66 in October of last year, utilizing essentially the same Rolls Royce 250 turbine engine employed on the Bell product. In fact, the continued economy of the piston-powered R44, and the threat of the upcoming turbine Robinson, contributed to Bell Aircraft cancelling Jet Ranger production altogether in late 2008.

I live a mere 15 minutes from the Robinson facility, so I’ve watched the company expand from a small plant on the north side of Torrance Airport to a larger building on the south side, and more recently, to a huge, 500,000-square-foot megafactory, generating $200 million in annual sales. If those numbers aren’t impressive enough, consider that Robinson recently rolled out its 9,000th helicopter.

New Bird
At Plane & Pilot, I’ve done most of the Robinson stories in the last 20 years, and I recently visited the factory again to fly the R66 and sit down with new president Kurt Robinson. Kurt took over the reins from his father when the elder Robinson retired in August 2009. (Eighty-year-old Frank Robinson still keeps his hand in at the company, but to everyone’s surprise, he really is retired.)

Kurt now oversees a workforce of some 1,200 engineers and technicians, turning out something like 14 helicopters a week. These days, an increasing number of those 1,200 folks are working on delivering the first of the Robinson R66 helicopters.

In most respects, the R66 represents less of a change over the R44 than did the R44 over the R22. While the new aircraft does open up a whole new market for Robinson, it’s primarily an expanded and powered-up version of the company’s piston four-seater.

The most obvious change is to the powerplant. The R66 incorporates an Allison 300RR turbine engine developed by Rolls Royce specifically for Robinson. Though the new mill is based on one of the Allison 250 series turbines, similar to that used on the Jet Ranger, it’s rated for only 300 shp rather than the 420 shp rating on the Bell 206. Even by turbine-engine standards, the RR300 is tiny and lightweight. It’s also mounted 37 degrees down at the rear to make room for a good-sized baggage compartment behind the main cabin, a 300-pound capacity. The R66 retains the small cargo space beneath the seats, still rated for 50 pounds, but now smaller in cubes to accommodate the new, 26G front seats.

Turbines are well known for reliability, and that’s especially important on helicopters, a type of aircraft that typically operates at low altitude and often over heavily congested areas. Any helicopter can autorotate to a safe landing in a very small space following an engine failure, but a turbine provides an extra measure of reliability. That’s one reason the Jet Ranger was so popular.

Like most of the Allison-inspired turbines, the R66’s RR300 engine is rated for 3,500 hours between overhauls. This compares to 2,200 hours for the dramatically derated, 205 hp Lycoming O-540 used on the R44. Despite the disparity, the Lycoming was universally admired by operators. It’s significant that the TBO is the highest I know of for a piston engine of 200 hp or more.

The downside of turbines (besides price) has always been fuel burn, and it’s true the R66 must carry 74 gallons to realize roughly the same range as the R44 with 50 gallons. The good news is that the tiny turbine’s additional power allows gross weight to increase while empty weight actually decreases, every manufacturer’s dream.

Specifically, gross weight jumps from 2,400 on the R44 to 2,700 pounds on the R66. In combination with the aforementioned empty-weight reduction of the diminutive Allison engine, the R66 winds up with a payload increase from 700 to 924 pounds. That means the new Robinson should easily be able to lift even five calorically enhanced souls.

We Asked You!

Aesthetically, the two aircraft are very similar, a veritable parts-bin buffet of components and subsystems. Both utilize Frank Robinson’s patented T-bar cyclic control rather than separate sticks. Both employ essentially the same skids and presumably the same pop-out floats for overwater emergencies. Rotor diameter hasn’t changed, though the R66’s cabin is wider than the R44’s.

Robinson has always been more interested in good engineering than sexy lines, so there was no attempt to separate the two aircraft aesthetically. An untrained eye might easily mistake an R66 for an R44. Though the R66 replaces the R44’s shrouded cooling fan with a large exhaust stack at the rear, the basic configuration remains the same. The cabin features two fairly comfortable buckets up front, plus three semi-small, bench-style seats in back. Aft leg room is limited, and so is headroom, but the R66 should be able to carry a pilot and two couples, an ideal combination for tour operators, since clients typically come in pairs.

I flew with Robinson’s chief pilot and director of flight test, Doug Tompkins. He did most of the test work on the new helicopter, and he probably knows the R66 better than anyone. I flew serial number 0003, a flight-test article. Robinson had just delivered the first customer R66 the previous week, serial number 0005. When the line is up and running at full speed, Robinson hopes to deliver three R66s a week.

The Rolls Royce engine doesn’t employ FADEC, but hot starts are still unlikely. Defining specific start procedure and limitations is the job of the flight manual, but it’s conventional for a turbine. With master and fuel on, you simply turn the igniter switch to “enable,” hit the starter button on the collective, and introduce fuel as N1 climbs through 15%.

As it turned out, cruise performance didn’t improve significantly with the turbine, but it didn’t have to. Helicopters are more often judged by how much they can carry and where they can go, rather than how quickly they can get to their destination. The R44 was already fairly quick by helicopter standards. The new R66 boasts a 120-knots spec to the R44’s 113-knots max cruise, fairly close. In contrast, the now discontinued Jet Ranger had book specs of 118 knots.

Robinson hadn’t published a climb spec as we went to press, and my flight was well under gross, but climb is obviously where you would expect to see the greatest improvement with 50% more horsepower. With only two up front, the R66 climbs with great enthusiasm.

From a typical hover, you can twist in the power, lift the collective, drop the nose and feel the little Rolls Royce pull with the enthusiasm of a team of Clydesdales. Ascending out of the Robinson company pad at Torrance, I saw climb rates of 2,500 fpm, all the more impressive because climb speed is only 60 knots.

HIGE (Hover In Ground Effect) nearly doubled, from 6,100 feet to 11,000 feet, in the transition from piston to turbine, and I’d expect a similar improvement in service ceiling. The less significant HOGE (substitute “Out Of!”) also improves to more than 8,000 feet.

A higher HOGE should help expand some markets not previously so favorable to Robinson. The company hopes the R66 will find happiness with ENG (Electronic News Gathering) and law-enforcement applications, where aircraft must sometimes hover for extended periods at several hundred feet AGL.

Frank Robinson completely redesigned the tail-rotor system to better accommodate the ENG/law-enforcement market. Those operators frequently are asked to fly the helicopter out of trim—read sideways. Flying sideways is a necessary evil for news and law-enforcement helicopters, and it’s one reason the Jet Ranger and Eurocopter remain popular in those applications. The R66’s larger tail rotor sidesteps the problem with a more effective, redesigned yaw control to handle the higher horsepower and torque.

Kurt Robinson says the R66 represents something of an ultimate for Robinson—for the time being. The company has no plans for a larger version of the R66 with greater seating capacity.

“We’re very happy with the niche we’ve carved out of the helicopter marketplace,” says Robinson. “We’ve done very well in every market we’ve addressed. We like to think the R66 will satisfy the need for turbine reliability and provide an additional level of performance.”

The post Robinson In The New Era appeared first on Plane & Pilot Magazine.

Robinson Helicopters
	R44	R66	Bell 206
Price ($)	440,000	790,000	1,300,000*
Shaft HP	205	300	420
Cruise (kts.)	113	120	116
ROC (fpm)	1000	1200 (est.)	1260
Gross Weight (lbs.)	2400	2700	3200
Empty Weight (lbs.)	1400	1280	1616
Useful Load (lbs.)	1000	1420	1584
Fuel (gals.)	50	74	91
Payload (lbs.)	700	924	974
HIGE (ft.)	6,100	11,000	12,800
HOGE (ft.)	4900	11,000	8800

*2009 Price

The post Robinson R44, R66 & Bell 206 appeared first on Plane & Pilot Magazine.

As a fixed-wing aviator who came late to the rotary-wing party, I discovered helicopters 20 years ago in conjunction with a story for an ABC program, Wide World of Flying. I was a confirmed fixed-wing fan whose only exposure to choppers had been shooting photos out of the back of an occasional Bell JetRanger or Hughes 500. For my ABC video story, I took a cram course in a Robinson R22, somehow managed to pass my private checkride after 55 hours and immediately went on camera to inform the audience of the joys of flying without the benefit of a runway.

Teen Solos R44—Plus Six Fixed Wings Robinson’s R22 is the company’s official rotary-wing trainer, but that’s not to suggest that the R44 can’t be used for teaching missions. Earlier this year, a Compton, Calif., teenager soloed an R44—along with six fixed-wing airplanes—from Compton/Woodley Airport. On March 16, 2008, Jonathan Strickland, a 16-year-old participant in Compton’s Tomorrow’s Aviation Museum (www.tamuseum.org) project for inner-city kids, soloed an R44 helicopter along with a Cessna 172RG, a new glass-panel Cessna 172SP, a Cessna 152, a Piper Warrior, a StingSport LSA and a Remos LSA—all within six hours. Founded by Celebrity Helicopters’ (www.celebheli.com) Chief Pilot Robin Petgrave, Tomorrow’s Aviation Museum offers subsidized flight training to underprivileged kids. Current participation includes some 800 youths who are willing to work around airplanes and are eager to learn everything they can about aviation. “If you see the lives of some of these kids,” says Petgrave, “the museum is really an opportunity for them to do something positive.” In addition to a number of flight instructors who had assisted in his training, actor Michael Dorn of Star Trek and Major Levi H. Thornhill, one of the original Tuskegee Airmen, were there to cheer on Strickland.

The R22 was pure fun, definitely a challenge and more sensitive than anything I’d flown before, but still great fun. I didn’t rush right out and put my Mooney on the market, but I was nevertheless amazed at the incredible talent and adaptability of rotary-wing things.

Since then, I’ve made a half-dozen visits to Robinson’s factory, and it’s always something special for me. The company’s Torrance, Calif., plant is only 15 minutes from my home, so I’ve had a ringside seat to watch Robinson transition from a fledgling manufacturer of a single two-seat trainer to a world-class producer of a variety of four-seat utility machines and, soon, a turbine-powered model. The R66 will offer an R44 configuration with a turbine; it’s intended to compete head-to-head with such industry stalwarts as the Bell JetRanger and the Eurocopter EC120.

In the last 30 years, Robinson has emerged as the world’s top manufacturer of both helicopters and civilian aircraft. That’s fixed-wing or rotary-wing aircraft, by the way. According to GAMA, Robinson sold 823 new helicopters last year; compare that to a top fixed-wing production of 807 airplanes by Cessna and 710 by Cirrus.

One reason for the R44’s preeminence as the world’s most popular helicopter is that it’s quite simply the least-expensive machine on the market—by a factor of at least 60%. Operating costs also come in far lower than the competition, again making the R44 the most popular machine in or out of its class.

That’s not to subtract from the Robinson’s talents. Robinson helicopters are as fast as their turbine competition; additionally, they offer nearly three hours of endurance, a three-passenger payload with full fuel and a hover out of ground effect (HOGE) of 4,500 feet.

Today’s R44 comes in a variety of flavors, from standard four-seat transport to fully equipped news chopper and police helicopter. The company produces dedicated models for both of the latter mediums. The R44 Newscopter incorporates a complete broadcast Electronic News Gathering (ENG) equipment package with a fully gimbaled HD digital camera system, centralized monitoring workstation and your choice of analog, digital or HD microwave broadcast capability. The police models are configured with 20-million-candlepower, gimbaled searchlights, infrared camera, siren, microwave COM system and PA system.

If you operate over water on a regular basis, there’s also a float-equipped model. Alternatively, an emergency pop-out float option inflates in less than a second if you need to make an autorotation into the wet.

Such multi talents partially explain why the R44 is as popular overseas as it is here in the United States. Seventy percent of all Robinson helicopters are exported to 58 countries. In January, that garnered a visit from California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and President George W. Bush, both complimenting Frank Robinson and his employees for contributing to America’s balance of trade.

Certainly, a major attraction of the R44 is the type’s operating economy. Part of that’s a function of the aircraft’s relative simplicity, but another major factor is the choice of powerplant. Robinson is one of only two helicopter manufacturers employing piston engines (the other is Schweizer). The Torrance-based company has opted for the tried and tested Lycoming IO-540 engine, normally rated for as much as 350 hp in other applications, but asked to deliver only 245 hp for five minutes and 205 hp maximum except take off (METO) power continuously on the R44. TBO is 2,200 hours for helicopters operated regularly and maintained to Robinson’s strict standards.

Back in the late ’80s, when I was training in a succession of R22s, instructor Tim Tucker used to joke that if I could learn to fly the little Robinson, I could probably handle any other civilian light helicopter on the market. The controls of the R22 and R44 are the most sensitive in the industry, one reason the types make excellent transition machines to something bigger, though many pilots may never feel the need to step up. Hydraulic boost eliminates cyclic stick shake and makes in-flight control a fingertip process. Standard equipment also includes an RPM governor that automatically controls engine rpm during normal operation.

The Robinson R44 (above) hovers over Sea Launch Commander, the world’s only ocean-based space launch company, in Long Beach, Calif. Below, the R44 flies an approach to a Holiday Inn rooftop in Torrance, Calif.

The new R44 I flew was Frank Robinson’s personal aircraft, and as you might expect, it was outfitted with practically every option, the pop-out floats, a Garmin 500 GPS and TIS uplink. I spent two hours renewing acquaintances with the R44, relearning the delicate sensitivity necessary to hover and fly the machine.

Robinson test pilot and instructor Markus Turnow put up with my amateurish attempts at remembering how to hover, but it all started coming together as I remembered the secret of flying a “Robby”—understatement. If you don’t fly an R44 for a year, you’re almost guaranteed to over-control for the first half-hour or so, regardless of whether you’ve been flying any other helicopter.

The cyclic control, essentially the equivalent of the stick on an airplane, controls roll and pitch, and it responds to the gentlest inputs. For takeoffs and landings, the usual advice is to use your fingertips with your right arm balanced on your knee, keeping your eyes on the horizon rather than the ground below during landings—you’ll be surprised by how quickly the R44 becomes friendly.

Still, helicopters operate to very different parameters than fixed-wing airplanes. The overhead rotor serves as the equivalent of a wing, and maintaining rotor speed is critical. Losing rotor speed is somewhat analogous to stalling an aircraft wing.

For that reason, helicopters must fly in strict compliance with the height/velocity diagram, sometimes better known as the “dead man’s curve.” In order to operate the aircraft safely, you need to maintain either a minimum altitude, a minimum airspeed or a combination of both. In other words, you must maintain a height/velocity profile outside the shaded area of the curve.

On the R44, the magic numbers are 50 knots at 150 feet in order to execute a successful autorotation. If you’re flying slower or lower, you’re not likely to manage an autorotation without damage. If you’re established in a high hover at zero airspeed, you should be above 550 feet to have any chance of a successful autorotation in the event of an engine failure.

Yes, we’ve all seen video of police action, floods or other news events that looked as if they were shot from a very low level. Chances are, the news copters were hovering at high altitude and using a long lens with a gyro-stabilized camera.

Such realities are one reason engine reliability is even more critical in a helicopter than in a fixed-wing airplane. It’s also a motivation to use a large engine, such as Robinson’s Lycoming IO-540, and derate it dramatically for minimum maintenance and the best possible TBO.

Under more normal circumstances, you can concentrate on flying the R44 inside the standard envelope, and that’s a relatively simple process. It’s important to remember, however, that helicopter operators have different attitudes about performance than do fixed-wing pilots. That’s because the mission is totally different. Where you can go and how much you can carry are more important than how fast you can get there. In many places, local operating restrictions now limit where helicopters can land, but in areas free of such regulations, they usually have the flexibility of setting down wherever the rotor will fit.

The flight deck of the R44 photographed for this article featured the Garmin GNS 430 (top). Pilots are prevented from inadvertantly pulling the mixture control by the mixture control guard (left). The helicopter’s primary flight control, the cyclic (right), as flown from the right seat.

Climb rate from sea level flirts with 1,000 fpm at the airplane’s 55-knot climb speed. If you’re primarily schooled in fixed-wing machines, the R44’s climb seems almost elevator-like, ascending at what appears a ridiculous rate because of the low forward velocity. Fortunately, you don’t normally need to climb for long. Helicopter missions are typically short-range and low-altitude, often flown at 2,000 feet or less.

Leveled for cruise, a standard R44 turns in an indicated 110 to 115 knots, and if need be, it can manage that speed for nearly three hours, covering almost 350 nm in the process. Again, however, helicopter missions rarely operate over such distances. Helicopters typically fly out-and-back stage lengths rarely exceeding 100 to 150 nm.

Utility is the helicopter’s byword, and Frank Robinson has succeeded in tapping into a market most people didn’t even know was there a generation ago. With the record-setting sales of the R22, and the pending introduction of the turbine-powered R66, Robinson Helicopter is accelerating straight up.

Building The World’s Most Popular Helicopters During a previous visit to Robinson Helicopter, Frank Robinson took me on a tour of the plant and pointed out the features that make his company one of the most efficient in the business. It’s a huge facility, consuming a major portion of Zamperini Field/Torrance Airport’s south ramp. In total, the Robinson buildings account for 480,000 square feet, counting the 2003 addition of the 220,000-square-foot west building. As a new facility, you might expect to find modern equipment and techniques, and you wouldn’t be disappointed. For one thing, the view from above suggests that much of the lighting is natural with the help of skylights and Southern California’s 330 days of sunshine yearly. Though my tour was in daylight, it never occurred to me to look up. Indeed, a glance at the ceiling revealed that there were essentially no overhead lights illuminated. Robinson works two shifts, so the lights come on when the sun goes down, but Robinson saves a fortune in lighting costs by using solar illumination during the day. Robinson also incorporates extensive use of CNC (computer numerically controlled) machining centers and two dynamometer test cells for engine testing. Robinson Helicopters was one of the first to be awarded ISO 9001 manufacturing certification for the design, manufacturing and certification of helicopters. The company prefers to perform most manufacturing functions—welding, machining, assembly, painting, flight-testing—in house rather than farm them out to subcontractors. The current production rate is 20 helicopters weekly, produced by a work force of 1,300 employees. Fully a quarter of those folks have been with the company for 10 years or more.

SPECS: 2008 Robinson R44 Raven II

The post Robinson R44 Raven II Helicopter: Piston Chopper appeared first on Plane & Pilot Magazine.

2008 Robinson R44 Raven II
New price:	$387,000
Engine make/model:	Lycoming IO-540
TBO (hrs.):	2200
Horsepower:	245@SL
Fuel type:	100/100LL
Rotor size (ft.):	33
Landing gear type:	Skids/Floats
Max ramp weight (lbs.):	2500
Gross weight (lbs.):	2500
Landing weight (lbs.):	2500
Empty weight, std. (lbs.):	1506
Useful load, std. (lbs.):	994
Payload, full std. fuel (lbs.):	700
Usable fuel, std. (gals.):	49
Overall length:	38 ft. 2 in.
Height:	10 ft. 11 in.
Power loading (lbs./hp.):	10.2
Seating capacity:	4
Cabin doors:	2
Cabin width (in.):	49
PERFORMANCE
Cruise speed (kts.):
75% power:	113
65% power:	105*
Fuel consumption, 75% power (gph):	16*
Best rate of climb (SL fpm):	1000
Service ceiling (ft.):	14,000
Hover in ground effect (ft.):	8950
Hover out of ground effect (ft.): 4500	4500
* Estimated
Source: Robinson Helicopter Company

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