Why my R44 is better than my MD500!
Well, no one ever said that pilots were not passionate people....
When I learned to fly helicopters, I learned in the Schweizer 300. After years of renting, my accountant told me I should buy a helicopter due to the amount of time I was spending flying them. I would "save" money....yea right...
After looking all over, I turned to the guy that taught me to fly helicopters for help. Having been a helicopter pilot for 40+ years and having flown nearly every Bell, MD and Eurocopter product available (including as a test pilot), he still recommended the R44 to me (and no, he was not trying to sell me one).
Because of the respect that I had for him and his flying abilities, I bought a brand new R44 Raven II (N4142G) without ever having flown one. He and I picked it up at the factory with four hours on the hobbs.
I would go on to put 1,300 hours on 42G including enough time and training to add an instrument and ATP Rotor ratings to my certificate. I flew 42G all over the place, day, night, mountains, desert, everything but IFR. Then I decided it was time to upgrade.
First I thought I was going to get an EC120. They looked cool. So I went up to Canada and went through the EC120 course taught by Canadian Helicopters (at the time). No where near the performance that I expected from a turbine and nothing like flying my Robbie. It was a total dog and would not come close to performing like the R44.
I did end up finding a turbine that I like and I purchased an MD500e. Yes, it performed better than my R44, flew faster, and would do maneuvers that would leave you in the morgue had you tried them in ANY two-bladed helicopter, not just the Robbie.
I loved the 500, sold 42G to a Chinese company and was never going to look back (or so I thought). I put almost 1,000 hours on my 500 before selling it and getting back into an R44.
After tracking all of the costs (purchase, insurance, all maintenance bills, fuel, oil, everything) I found that I was paying 4 1/2 times more per hour in the 500 than what my R44 cost me for nearly the same mission. After selling my R44, my total cost per hour over 1300 hours was $260.00 per hour. After selling my 500, I was at $1200 per hour.
Since I fly jets for a living and only fly helicopters as a hobby, the justification simply was not there for me. A very good friend of mine has an Enstrom 280FX...I thought I would look at one of those but the lack of capability over the R44 (speed, range, # of seats, and no available A/C that I could find) lead me right back to the R44.
So, from an owner/operator standpoint I can tell you that the R44 is a fantastic helicopter, easy to maintain, easy to fly, stable, and inexpensive to operate. Even if I had to replace my blades at the extra cost of $50K, it still would have been far less expensive to operate than my 500 for my mission.
I have a friend that bought a new AStar and it sat on the deck die to a bearing problem in the tail rotor system. He paid millions for that helicopter and could not fly it until they figured out how to fix the tail rotor problem....Not sure about any of you, but I would have been pissed had I just dropped millions on a new helicopter only to not be able to fly it.
My point being that Robinson is not the only helicopter that had ADs, and frankly the ADs on my 500 were FAR more expensive than my R44.
So from someone who has put several thousand hours in my own helicopters turbine and piston both, for my mission, the R44 wins hands down!