CRAN;
Of course a lot of the answers here are just too easy: we'd all like our helis to be cheaper, have more power, use less fuel and so on. Unfortunately these are usually conflicting requirements and in all designs compromises have to be made.
So here's a couple of
practicalities to get things started:
1. Instruments:
For the money, instruments should be much higher quality and not go wrong. How hard can it be to design a fuel gauge that actually works, and horizons etc. that can stand up to a little ham-fistedness from students ? And radios that don't f*ck up if you shut down the engine before they're switched off ? For the money, all these should work from day 1 for the life of the helicopter with little or no maintenance.
2. Carb heat:
Either make it fully manual or have a fuel injected engine that doesn't carb ice. What I don't want is poxy carb heat assist which just results in the control not being in the same position as you left it
[Not much use anyway unless it has time displacement technology and can increase the heat 30 seconds
before you reduce power]
.
3. Error-proof:
Following on from 1, and especialy on training aircraft should be a lot harder to inadvertently cause damage by incorrect operation. To take an example: the recent discussion on engine overspeeds. Why is it even
possible to rev the engine so high as to cause damage ? Should be easy enough to have a rev limiter or similar.
And easy enough to fit electrical protection to radios etc. so that they can't be damaged.