Got endorsed on our new R66 yesterday, then flew it back to base today and started the endorsement for one of our line pilots. So far I have the vast total of 8 hours on type, but it's a bloody impressive machine. The most noticeable things so far are the power reserves and performance.
It's fast. I loaded 5 adults and just over half fuel. With 80% Tq we were doing 120 kts without breaking a sweat.
Hover engine failures were interesting. We started at 1 metre skid height. I won't say how high we eventually did them from, but if I ever caught one of our pilots taxiing at that height, I'd kick their backside from here to next week. I'm guessing some of it was rotor intertia, and some was slow engine spool down, but it was impressive.
It has a fair bit of tail rotor roll. Noticeably left-skid-low in the hover, and I could easily balance it on just the heel of the left skid when picking up or setting down. When flying from the left seat, the cyclic grip is right above my right knee in straight & level flight.That's a fair way over - certainly compared to R22/R44.
The controls are heavy without hydraulics - no surprises there. They're heavier than an R44 or B206, but are well behaved (unlike an AS350, for example !) and it's very comfortably flyable down to a hover or run-on landing.
Niggles for me were: (1) It leaks just like a Robbie. We flew for a couple of hours in rain, and the water was everywhere, including the boot. (2) The heating also turns on a ventilation fan, but I couldn't find any way to have the fan on its own, which is a bugger when you're flying in tropical rain and you want to defog the windshield without cooking your passengers. And (3) the warning light which tells you if a cowl has been left open is only triggered by some of the cowls. So even if the warning light is off, you can't be sure that all of the cowls have been secured.
Last edited by Unhinged; 11th Mar 2011 at 09:56.