Incredibly, the U.S. military decided that it didn’t need to waste every possible dollar every day. The Army will now do some primary training of helicopter pilots in the Robinson R66 (rebranded the “TH-66 Sage”) at a civilian flight school in Marianna, Florida, a one-hour drive from Ron DeSantis’s house in Tallahassee. An R44 would probably make better economic sense, but the idea of a piston-powered aircraft is apparently too terrifying for America’s bravest heroes.
See “Crew Training International and Helicopter Institute awarded U.S.Army FAA Part 141 Helicopter Flight School Pilot Program” (March 6, 2025)
Related:
the airspace (Marianna at the top center; note the magenta color for the airport, which indicates that there is no control tower):
My guess is they want turbines so the new pilots don’t develop inappropriate responses that are good for the piston world by bad for the turbine world. The airport is close to Fort Rucker, AL
I just went on Controller.com to look up price of R66 vs Bell 505. Holy crap, when did the price of a Bell 505 go up to $2.4M?! In 2017 weren’t they only $1.1M?
OP: I think that the 505 is more or less constant after actual inflation is considered. It was announced in 2014 for $1.1MM. According to official government inflation statistics (based on the price of DVD players at Walmart?), this is equivalent to $1.5MM today. But if we inflate by the cost of health insurance or a house in a neighborhood where people actually want to live, etc., we probably get closer to $2.4MM. Also, Bell has added some options that didn’t exist as of 2014. So maybe $2.15MM is the comparable price.
@philg: weird behavior on your website. Using browser Brave, I can see 3 comments from “Dave In Austin”, “Otto Pilot” (me), “philg”, all under the heading “3 thoughts on ‘Robinson goes to war'”.
In browsers Chrome, Firefox, Opera, and Edge I only see 1 comment from “Dave In Austin”, under the heading “One thought on “Robinson goes to war”. Same results in the “Recent Comments” box.
screen caps: https://imgur.com/a/iep2QpN
I think it is caching behavior. Try again in an hour or so and you might not see any difference among the browsers.