I'm no helicopter expert, but the airframe and skids on this thing look MUCH better designed and built than other experimental or small heli's I've seen. Many of them look flat out scary! This thing looks like a real nice piece of kit.
It's interesting that you have the turbine exhaust facing out to the starboard side. If you had it facing out the port side it would assist in anti-torque thrust and offload the tail rotor making the machine more efficient.
You're correct, and that was how they had it initially, but I'm told that the turbulent, hot exhaust stream blowing back through the tail rotor caused erratic tail control.
hcopter mmmm.....conflicting messages. hcopter says the hot exhaust flowing back to the tail rotor caused tail issues BUT Johnbass37 says it caused issues with tail winds. These issues are totally different as the air flow is 180 degrees between each of them. Who is correct?
+purge98 Hovering in a tailwind (not recommended) the exhaust doesn't make it back to the tail rotor as the wind would blow it forward like you say. However, when hovering into the wind or with forward airspeed the hot exhaust goes past the tail, I can see this by the soot that I get on the lower half of the vertical fin. If the exhaust was to the left the tail rotor would be getting this soot and the bottom half of the tail rotor disk would be in hot, less dense air while the top would be in denser cool air, not great for tail rotor effectiveness.
If I got my hands on that engine, it would probably get lost in a car on its way to an aircraft... despite my being an aviation fan and interested in flight. Nice helli driving.
There are pilots in Australia that weigh a lot more than you and fly it no problem!! Do you have enough power to throw it around or do you need to be careful due to weight?
1.Which helicopter did you learnnto fly on? Keen on getting one of this but unsure on how to go about learning 2. Whats the avg per hour fuel consumption? Their site does not show 3. How reliable is it? 4. Whats its avg flight time endurance?
Do people who fly these actually go anywhere or just around the airport. If they are not used for transportation anywhere what are they for? Do they take it camping or flying's what use are they? And the fuel burn compared to fix wing airplanes must be hugh and and Jet A at that. What is the range and payload. I know they can land where fixed wings can not but what is the point? And the cost of maintenance is far greater than a fixed wing airplane. They have got to be fun, but where can you go?
Old comment but for more local/regional travel, say within 100 mile radius, helis are much more practical than airplanes. If you live where you have some space, you can take off and land from your house and go directly to your destination, provided it also has space to land. With airplanes you're limited to airports or at least air strips (which require much more space). You can land a heli almost anywhere - I've seen yachts and houseboats on the lake with heli pads, as well as pads at local mansions. To my knowledge, you also aren't required to coordinate with air traffic control, unless you're within the airspace of an airport (5 mile radius) and provided you stay below commercial traffic altitude (10,000+ feet which most helis have trouble exceeding anyway). Also, Jet A is just more purified kerosene - many people who fly this turbine heli just feed it ordinary kerosene in fact, not appreciably different in price than automotive gasoline. You're right about the maintenance - no getting around that. Things that spin, like the rotor blades, are subject to lots of fatigue stress from repeated cycling through different positions, which is why FAA certified helis (including this one) will need to have new rotor blades every so many hours, the exact number for which I don't remember but I think it's 2000, even if no damage is evident.
I am interested in one also...do they have one like this without turbo engine...how much would total cost be roughly for a new one built or one 3 or four years old in excellent condition with low hours? thax....ps whats maxium pilot weight allowed? im 260lbs
Nice but this pilot seems to ignore the "death zone " where, if his engine failed, would not allow him to build enough rotor rpm to cushion his impact....
