HeliEng,
I hope you are still sane! I am new to the gang so for the moment I still "enjoy" the fight between the two "masters".
Here some info on floats as far R22, R44, Bell-47īs.
I have to look it up in the manual for the R22, but the R44 float-equipment(permanent+pop outīs) are to be used for emergency use only, although the floats are very tough (even the pop outs, which look like the permanent ones but are thinner). That of course includes training. However if you have to land on water because there is no where else to land on permanent basis, the Robinson is not for you. The R22 is okay to land in water, even close to max gross w. But it is quite interesting - donīt try this in heavy seas (preferably in fresh water only!!).
For tuna-checkouts I take students for full touch downs in the R44, however with 2persons on board only and half fuel. The R44 sits awfully deep in the water (which is good when the engine went, bad for training)
As they are to be used for emergency only, this is okay as it gives the helicopter lots of stability once in the water, although with a full load mostlikely you will have water in the cabin. However you probably will float for ever without rolling.
Not so good for training as the R44 airfilter sits very low and even when it is sealed with tape, you better watch out that you do not get any water in there(bad news for the engine!!).
R22 will roll sooner or later except in calm sea. However most pilots make successful emergency-autorotations.Just for the record:
As far as I know the reason on ALL of this e-autos was lousy maintenance......
Other than that, in a Robinson you really do not need Floats, they are the most reliable machines I know (I have about 6000 hrs total, of that about 4000 in R., in all kinds of "interesting" terrain...),they just slow you down (except the pop-outs).
According to the manual of the R44 you can take off again, even on the pop outs, repeatetly.
Last: most helicopters (tuna ops) that go in the sea undamaged, get light to heavy damage on recovery to the tunaboat, due to the movements of the boat and the available recovery gear.
Probably this does not answer all your questions, but it gives you some idea about floats on light helicopters at sea.
To Lu Z.:
What about the Hughes (MD)-500 models, are they fully articulated? They had loads of them in the tuna spotting business on floats, as far as I know no trouble with ground resonance (Although they are out of business now as they can not match the R44 with the easy of maintenance and economy of operation and endurance...). Contrary the few Schweizer 300īs that where tried out where terrible (3 blades...).
Fly safe,
3top
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