To: T'aint natural
I don’t know how someone living in London could be so sure of the “Hate-Hate” relationship between Robinson and the NTSB but let’s assume you are correct. In every loss of control accident the NTSB calls in Frank Robinson as their technical advisor and the final conclusion relative to the accident is that it is pilot error, and if it involves a training aircraft, Frank Robinson will invariably state that the R22 was not designed to be used as a trainer. Any attempt to steer the investigation to a design fault is strongly resisted by Frank Robinson or, one of his associates.
There was only one crash that was related to a manufacturing process and that is mentioned in the newspaper article that appears above. Every other accident was attributed to pilot error or, an inconclusive reason. The Robinson Helicopter is very reliable but it is my feeling that there is a design flaw in the rotorhead that allows these accidents to happen.
The safety reg that mandates the training of Robinson operators will soon be lifted and when that happens there will be a lot of poorly trained pilots ending up in a body bag because of not adhering to the FAA’s suggestion about flying out of trim and sideslipping and or, recovering from a zero G incident in accordance with the POH instructions.
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The Cat