Originally Posted by
lelebebbel
Robinson helicopters: "
our critical gauges work about as good as those on an old broken car".
No wait I quoted that wrong,
it actually says:
"
For more than 50 years, Robinson Helicopter has been at the forefront of the helicopter industry by delivering safety enhancing technologies"
My bad, I wonder how I could have got that confused.
Certain flight regimes have you well below 18" a lot, yes. Lower speed flight, such as cattle mustering, often has you sitting at 17" all day. Another example is higher altitude flight. At higher altitude, 18" does no longer indicate the same low throttle opening as it does in Torrance CA, however no guidance is given whatsoever how to deal with that, it just says "pull full below 18"."
Maybe? I don't know since I can't find a relative humidity gauge anywhere on the dash. What is the relative humidity once you're 10 miles and a few thousand feet above the airport? An hour after takeoff? There is no other helicopter type that forces you to make these kind of guesses. A simpler solution would be to just fix the damn carb air temperature gauge, but apparently that challenge is just too difficult for the company at the forefront of the helicopter industry.
Robinson Helicopters: "
barely good enough that we still haven't been sued out of existence"
Interesting, I've always been under the impression that slow flight took more power, and that those Cattle Mustering pilots busted MAP limits all the time (at least that's what they mentioned a few times at the Safety Course),..but anyway, are a lot of R22 Cattle Mustering pilots crashing due to carb ice?
Plus, its not just humidity, there's also the outside temp and visible moisture,...but I'm sorry there's no humidity guage in the R22. There's no fog guage either, and I could have used one of those plenty of times, lol.
,...and it was a brand new 2000 Saturn, lol.
Anyway, everyone knows Robbies are budget helicopters. So, either accept them for their flaws, or go fly something else. Plenty of other choices out there you know.
Oh,...and if the throttle is wide open at just 18" at high altitude, you should know that its not going to create that venturi like effect on that side of the butterfly valve, so carb ice shouldn't be a problem. Its probably why they tell you to lower the carb heat on short final at high altitude, but not at sea level.