Originally Posted by
nigelh
Well 19th March will be the day the first 505 gets registered in the UK 🇬🇧 and demos etc on 21st !!
Did anyone get to try it out at Vegas ?? My daughter was there but sadly they cancelled a day flying due to high winds .....and it was fully booked with demos ! The word so far seems mainly excellent...some don’t like the looks bit personally I think it looks cool 😎. Certainly in comparison to a R66 , Enstrom 480 .
I just want power, comfort , reliability and economic...that’s all !!
I flew withy my boss and 2 other guys plus the Bell pilot. Took off vertically out of the parking lot with 5 men in it, 80 % fuel AND power to spare, that was nice. Highest speed we got to was around 115 KTS and you could feel the vibrations increasing noticeably from 110 onwards. It was windy that day (we flew on Tuesday morning at around 11 am). The pinneacle approach we flew north of the city was a nonevent, again good power margin in the end.
My boss has around 1200 hours in 206 B3, 206L1, L2 & L4 and said it flew exactly like the L4, with the same vibrations building after 110 KTS so in his opinion it woun't do 125+ KTS comfortably and I don't think it would either.
Also the interior was nonexistent with bare glasfibre doors, no carpet, no panels around the rotor brake (I actually asked the Bell pilot if this was a pre-production modell with so much bare areas in the back and the big opening with visible cables etc. around the rotor brake). His comment was that you could get all that as aftermarket parts.
I know that our customer bought one 2 years ago and sold it (with a small profit) a month ago because of exactly those things.
In the end it was 1.3 Mio. Euros, no carpets, no door panels, big hole in the overhead panel and mostly Bell's surcharge policy of charging 6000.00 $ for each door opener (2 of them on the machine!!), 19,000.00 $ for a standby ASI & TAS (no way around that as they're mandatory!).
Funny enough we only got the info about the door openers and ASI/ TAS because 6 month before scheduled production date of the machine we asked about a revised options list.
They didn't think it was important to ask if we wanted any other options on the machine. And you still have to go off to buy aftermarket parts to make it look halfway decent on the inside after you had it delivered.
He's now keeping his EC 120 which will get it's 15 years inspection next winter plus new paint and interior
I think it has a good power margin (better than the EC 120) but is not as fast (cruising speed) and smooth and it also looks like a budget helicopter from the inside. If you want a good priced entry level turbine, buy a 66. If you want a quality helicopter buy a 120.