The Robinson R22 that I flew back to Boston from Los Angeles is just about ready for its first 100-hour inspection. Robinson always raises its prices on January 15. So it seemed like a good time to think about a new helicopter. I ordered a four-seat Robinson R44, yellow with a red stripe, to be delivered in May. In the interests of economy and with an eye toward keeping rental prices low at East Coast Aero Club, ours is a stripped Raven I model. We’ll stick a handheld GPS up against the door frame or the bubble and call it complete. One of the great things about buying a Robinson is that I get to do yet another cross-country helicopter trip. The tentative plan is to fly to California on May 19, right after the MIT semester ends, and do some training and playing around with the ship on the West Coast, then have a copilot fly out and take the ship back to Boston.
14 thoughts on “The Robinson R44”
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Philip: pardon my ignorance, but why can these not be delivered directly to Boston? Is what you describe here the way that most aircraft purchases are received by their owners?
Trevis: An aircraft is pretty big! Even if it could be shipped, for almost any plane it would probably be cheaper to fly. Robinson doesn’t want their birds shipped on the road; they consider the vibrations and impacts that a helicopter receives on a trailer to be worse than in-flight vibrations. The helicopter is designed to be flown, not trucked.
C’mon Phil, stop goofing around. aso.com has
a fair number of turbine helicopters available
for < $500K. Tougher to rent, I’ll give you
that 🙂
Can we now officially say that Phil can no longer complain about the price and fuel economy of SUVs???
Rick: It is true that you can buy a turbine ship for almost nothing (200-300k), the fuel and parts result in operating costs at least 2-3X an R44.
Michael: It is true that I finally have an aircraft that gets worse mileage than an SUV! I don’t think that I ever complained about the price of SUVs, though. If car companies can get yuppies to pay $70,000 for a vehicle that rides worse than a Hyundai rental car, more power to them!
What are the reasons that prevent autogyros from being more popular? They should be a cheaper, and perhaps safer, alternative to helicopters.
Autogyros can’t though, right?
Sorry, “..can’t hover though..”
Rick: As I understand it, autogyros don’t fly very well. They chew up about as much runway as an airplane designed for short fields. They make a lot of noise, require a lot of maintenance. They combine the worst aspects of helicopters and airplanes.
Philip: Autogyro fans claim exactly the opposite, saying that they combine the best characteristics of helicopter and airplanes. I was under the impression that autogyros are quieter and require less maintenance than helicopters. There is a company that believes in the future of autorotative flight (that is what they say in their Web page), GROEN BROTHERS (www.groenbros.com). I’m not an autogyro advocate; I just find it interesting that there are no certified autogyros.
On the hazards of shipping aircraft, anyone remember the issues in New York City with the Grumman Flxible(sic) buses a few decades ago? I believe the prevailing wisdom was that aircraft designers just weren’t used to dealing with the sorts of vibration and shocks that wheeled vehicles (especially those on NYC streets) had to deal with.
Aaand… if I were a rotary wing pilot looking for something in which to build up hours, I’d be sniffing around the Helicycle: Turbine, but with an operating cost that rivals the R22, and if you build it yourself you can do all of the maintenance.
Unfortunately, it doesn’t have room for a Samoyed, which is probably a dealbreaker for Philip, and I don’t think it’s a rentable machine, either, which changes the cost structure.
Don’t ever think about shipping by rail. Humping loads, horizontal, on the order of 20g’s, unless the railroads have improved their methods of train makeup.
If I remember correctly, aircraft wing loads are greatest with full fuel taxiing.
I worked on aluminum ground vehicles that were built of aluminum plate up to 3 inches thick and we had cracks in them too from vibrations.
I’m buying a used R-44 Clipper II with 1000 hours from a school (original owner). What would you estimate is the right price for that? Where are the resources to figure that out; I don’t know of any.
Thanks,
Ervin