group flying and databases
Earl - I'm beginning to change my opinion about you!
I had thought you were someone who posted on Pprune in between juggling axes near the grinder when on standby in the crew room , but your contribution to this thread is First Class. Keep it coming.
Aucky - are you in the UK?
Chopperchappie - I'll help you with this. I usually have one or more R22 and one or more R44 (I buy and sell them) so there are opportunities to use these while they are in stock.
One point that I don't think that anyone has mentioned is that rotary owners are a very, very different breed to their fixed wing brothers.
The fixed wing guys tend to be the type that loves the "clubhouse" ethos and like to belong to a group. Most of them have less disposable income and often fit in flying as a hobby just like someone would play football or golf.
The rotary guys tend to be far more independent, more maverick and more insular. They are usually businessmen who have made it, to a greater or lesser degree. Even the less successful ones have got used to having things done "their way" and all of them have more disposable income than an equivalent fixed wing flyer. And they tend to be more passionate about flying.
All these character traits do NOT lend themselves to the concept of group flying and the sharing of the toys generally. Despite the utter nonsense of buying a 500k aircraft and flying it for less than 50 hours a year, it happens all the time.
There can be many reasons for this, ranging from "I don't care" to "I didn't know", but at the end of the day it doesn't really matter: that's the way it is.
One last point: don't confuse hours builders - usually towards getting a CPL(H) - with wannabe owners. They are totally different markets within the small rotary industry.
As a general rule, a CPL-er will never buy an aircraft. He may buy hours in a syndicate, but he'll be off at the first whiff of oil in the North Sea. He'll also welcome cost-sharing hours that people like me offer when I want to go somewhere in my R22.
Wannabe owners, on the other hand, will put up with the inconvenience of sharing, repositioning and travelling distances in order to fly. It is they that will welcome your efforts to make flying helicopters more accessible to more people more of the time.
One of my missions is to help people fly more often and more safely, and if I can help you Chopperchappie and Aucky, I will.
Big Ls.