Enstrom 280L
Sorry to be away but just completed a pleasant four days oop north with Bill (Norman) Bailey DFM at Barton ... type rating three guys from Hamburg who have decided to start a heli school on the Enstrom!
So now the Enstrom 280L turns up. And funny enough while I was at Barton I was looking at a photo I took of the blue four-seat Enstrom mock-up while it was parked with my Spooner firm at Shoreham. I cheekily put the G-HAWK reg on the side for an exhibition and got no end of complaints from the reggie spotters!
I flew the real Hawk at the 1980 HAI at San Diego. I asked the boss, F Lee Bailey to just add an 'L' to the new four-seat model to help with CAA certification (silly boy!) ... so she initially became known as the 280L Hawk. When I flew her from the exhibition site with the Enstrom CP Bill Taylor, she was just a stretched 280C Shark using the same HIO 360 EAD series turbo Lycoming which wasn't quite enough puff to lift four pax. So all demos were made with just one in the back. In all respects the type was just a heavy 205BHP 280C Shark as the 225 BHP F models hadn't arrived then. I actually sold the first two off the specification ... one to the MD of Northair and the second to a guy in Scotland (he actually commenced legal proceedings later for failing to deliver). To solve the power situation, I suggested to Enstrom engineering they just used the IO 540 'Aztec' six-cylinder 250 BHP engine, but FLB said they didn't intend to put the 280L Hawk into production as they were planning an Allison 250 turbine 480 model! And that is what arrived.
On this tack and when loads of Enstrom Sharks were hanging about in hangars, I approached Bill Bonner, that innovative engineer at Shoreham who raced Jaguar engine F1 speed boats and displayed a water cooled Chipmunk at Farnborough. I designed a semi-mono construction three seat 'plug' the idea being to drag the hangar queens out and slip the plug between the plastic cabin and the engine pylon giving a five seater. Made in the UK was on and the great fixed winger, Derek Page, now Lord Page was interested in securing some Government finance. We even had a hangar standing by in Wales with a rent free first year. All this when the pound was barely worth a dollar! ... and I was already talking to my bank about setting up a world-wide network of sales distributors and investing a million dollars! Some hope, The design would have used the Ford Granada water-cooled engine and at 3000 rpm was especially quiet. It was to be called the Enstrom Skyline after my new company at Wycombe.
Sadly the extreme amount of money necessary for ... design approval, drawing office approval, manufacturing approval and uncle Tom Cobley torpedoed the scheme.
The original flying version of the 280L, which became 380L ... languished at the Enstrom's Menominee plant for many years. I think the blue mock-up was sold to Scandinavia. I invariably look back at one of my many 'missed opportunities' but ain't life like that!
Goodbye all and safe flying.
Dennis Kenyon.
PS. If you are not too bored, read on ...... At a distributor meeting at Menominee around 1980, FLB was pressing all those present to place $5,000 deposits to help with the funding of the new ship. (We ordered two!) One guy meekly asked what would happen to those who didn't. Since Captain Ernest Medina of the Melai Massacre fame was present, FLB just made rapid fire gestures from the hip and said ... "We send in Ernie Medina."