Originally Posted by Reely340
I just find it sad, that french design pride resulted in so many of them rolling around on the ground due to pilot mishandling.
The fact that the Cabri has the clockwise MR has nothing to do with "french design pride". This is simply the way it's done in central Europe (and east of that). Remember that this helicopter was originally designed in-house by EC and was supposed to be marketed and sold by EC.
Your point that the Cabri has "so many of them rolling around on the ground" (is it really sooo many?) has nothing to do with the fact that it has the clockwise MR. Otherwise pilots transitioning from one orientation to the other would routinely trash helicopters during training,
which is not the case!
Going from one to the other is not that big of a deal and has been done by myriads of pilots for the last 65 years at least. So this is certainly not exclusively a training machine for clockwise rotary aviation. Pilots who learned on the Cabri will have no significant issues transitioning to a Bell, just like those who learned on an american helicopter had no significant issues transitioning into an EC! Don't try to create an issue that has never been one.
If it gets documented reliably that there is above-average numbers of training accidents in the Cabri, the cause(s) has to be properly evaluated.
I tell you now,
if this becomes evident, the problem will not be the MR orientation. It
could be the general fenestron handling characteristics
combined with the allegedly Cabri-specific problem of certain regimes being difficult or not possible to recover from. This could certainly be fixed by training measures just like some of the Robinson issues were practically dealt with.
My ultimate small helicopter would be a JetA-powered Cabri with a Notar and offer at least the cabin space, rotor clearance and versatility of the S300.
Edit: Ok, that would be a 520N with Guimbal crashworthiness and remote central locking.