When comparing the costs between the 505 and the R66 - the figures that manufacturers are quoting is based upon the machine running through all of it's hours. This is an important point. For instance, the power-plant in R66 is rated for 2000hrs and 3000 cylces. This means unless on average you're doing at least 40mins per cycle, you will not reach the 3000hrs the engine is rated for. When one accounts for maintenance runs and occasional aborted start up then the figure will be closer to the one hour mark per start. In practice many R66 are for sale at the moment for pennies on the dollar because of this. So if you're an operator who does very long cycles you can be better off with a second hand R66 which has plenty of life left but not cycles. If you're a private buyer who goes on occasional 20min flight here or there, or an operator who does 20min scenic flights and has to often shutdown; the R66 can and will cost a lot more than the factory figures reveal. Resale value matters; especially when one is trying to sell a machine - case and point, meet this lemon 636 cycles left, for the 2000 hours to run: [pprune wont let me link because of my post count] - Blindly looking at hourly costs published can lead to uncomfortable situations in the future
Last edited by nikoel; 3rd Mar 2020 at 07:08.