Originally Posted by
Gordy
No they do not all have governors. I learnt on a R-22 HP and flew R-44 back when it first came out in 93 with no governor.
Gordy, I was responding to the title "all R44", not all Robinsons... I didn't remember that the Astro R44 started without a governor. There were not a lot of R44 on the east coast, I don't remember, but Robinson was probably limiting R44 sales to the west coast at first. Larry Durocher from Northeast Helicopters ( the first east coast Robinson flight school ) arranged to bring in an R44 for people to fly. I remember I wouldn't let my son go higher than a hover with me, because the #1 R44 had crashed and the cause was not yet known:
As for R22s, I learned in R22 standards and HPs. By the time I was taking lessons, they all had tip weights, but a friend who started 2-3 years before me remembers flying the standards without tip weights. There were no rotor brakes or aux fuel tanks, and none of our aircraft had any gyro instruments. Oh yeah, no voice activated intercom, you had to use the push buttons, which Robinson must have paid $0.01 for, because they never worked. The lack of governors increased the CFI's workload considerably ... Basically the instructor WAS the governor, we would always be tweaking the RPM to keep it in the green. The green range was something like 97-104 but students would have excursions all the time, so we would have to keep an eye on the RPM.
We had the #2 R22, N32AD at our school. It's now in the Smithsonian. It had already been converted to an HP when I was flying it. The cockpit was an inch or two narrower than all other R22s, which made it difficult to do hover autos from the left seat if the door was on... Your wrist would get jammed against the door. You had to do a two step motion... Roll the throttle to idle, reposition your hand, roll the throttle the rest of the way into the override...
When the R22 governor was first introduced, it would move the collective. This sounds like a good idea... It could actually lower the collective to recover RPM. It actually sucked, and was soon replaced by the R44 governor design which only moved the throttle.