Ah, it's a Yamaha FZR. Which size? I'm guessing you went with a 1000 but run it derated - not sure how many thousand miles of motorway speeds/power motorbike engines are designed to last these days. Helis seem to aim for a few thousand hours at least.
I like the concept: figure out the single main obstacle to making helicopters safe, rotor inertia, and then design a rotor specifically to improve this feature. And as a side benefit improve the aerodynamic efficiency by a potential maximum of 30% for a given rotor diameter. This one deserves to succeed!
Normally rotors are tested on top of whirl towers. Why not firmly bolt the whole helicopter to a balance, maybe out of ground effect, then "fly" it to check the performance? Or strap it to a weighted trolley (heavier version of your castored wheels on the skids) to keep it on terra-firma while you pull collective to what would be hover for a series of ground runs to get the feel of it? If you are sure where the C of G is then you could mount heli to trolley with four ball joint end links converging just above CG (for stability)*. Best if ball ends attatched to the fuselage, as close to C of G as possible. Use a scissor link (or drive shaft with sliding splines) to make trolley follow in yaw.
This would give you the feel of the machine in flight but without putting yourself at risk. In particular, confidence that the machine is behaving itself dynamically, including tail rotor and main rotor in flap-back. If you check all of the bolts, welds, belts, etc after each run you will prove to yourself that the machine is reliable.
Just a thought.
*I originally suggested tethers, but these would cause problems as they became taught. Also they do not allow various collective settings to be tried.
Last edited by Graviman; 18th Jan 2010 at 11:49.