Originally Posted by
ironbutt57
"for unknown reasons, the rotor diverged from its normal plane of rotation and struck the side of the helicopter"...far too frequently seen in Robinson accident reports..a former Army acquaintance of mine who was considering getting involved in a flight school flew a demo flight in one...this guy with several tours in "Nam, and more as an instructor at FT Rucker...his assessment..."thats probably the worst helicopter a beginner could get his hands on"
From my point of view....as a plank pilot of many years....I actually quite liked the idea of learning in the R22 after a couple of flights, as it was clearly a bit of a bugger to get to grips with and would make other helicopters seem quite easy to fly. However, I was also very aware that the time to react to a loss of power, could be the difference between an autorotation to whatever end and a lump of metal falling out of the sky with slowly rotating rotors! I am also a believer in using equipment for what it was designed for.....and the R22 was never designed as a training helicopter. It doesn't cope well with ham fisted flying.