R44 Pilots On A Budget Required - Denham / Wycombe

[chopperchappie]

So there's been a lot of people on this forum asking about why does nobody ever do anything to make flying helicopters cheaper?

I have a group of people that want to buy a helicopter and share it to make the costs of flying rediculously cheap.

Not much commitment required and the figures are a no brainer if you are paying standard rates to SFH at the moment.

We are literally a couple of people short of being able to achieve this and make the cost of flying substantially cheaper than renting through a commercial SFH method.

Any R44 pilots, or other rotary pilots that want to type-rate and fly R44 Raven II that are (seriously) interested should PM me.

If you are interested I have a load of data on the subject and can answer 99% of your questions with some pdfs. that I already have, so please include your email so I can send it to you.

I assume this post doesn't breach the forum rules as it's not for profit and all in the interests of cheap group flying!

CC


P.S. I you are not interested but you know someone that would be - please forward them the info.

[hands_on123]

There no such thing as "seriously cheap" helicopter flying (unless you count dodgy home-builds)

The problem with group ownership is when its a nice sunny weekend etc, everyone wants to use it. Hence booking conflicts.

Also, a problem arises when someone wants to sell their share, buyers can be hard to find. And what if X overspeeds the engine, does X pay? or the group? etc etc..

[chopperchappie]

Everyone is always so negative.....

Yes - surely people will want to fly when the weather is good, but what's the alternative, phone up the local SFH on the spur of the moment to be told all their aircraft are all available?

Seriously cheap - compared to standard SFH rates. It does exist.

Who said anything about needing to buy/sell a share ? As I said - Minimal Commitment to join the scheme.

If someone overspeeds the engine it's covered by the insurance (typically without an excess - depending on the policy), on the grounds that the insurance recognizes it's less risk to replace an engine than pay for a helicopter falling out of the sky.

The whole essence of the proposal is to take away a lot of the risk associated with "typical" group ownership.

Lordy lordy !

CC

[hands_on123]

There are very few group ownerships in the UK helicopter world, and I think you will discover the reasons for that in due course!

But good luck if you can make it work.

[JTobias]

Guys,

Youre too negative guys.
Get the rules right and it can work.

I was in a turbine group for 3 years with absolutely no problem. I'm also a member of www.helicoptergrouping.com (http://www.helicoptergrouping.com).

The first rule is to have as few rules as possible
The second rule is to have some sensible limit on "block bookings"
The third rule is ensure that you are all of the same financial bracket. (Sorry, but when there is a requirement for a cash call, you all have to be in a position to afford it)
The fourth rule is ensure you're fixed operating costs are covered by a monthly standing order divided by how many shares there are.

Thats it.

If you want any more help or more information on my positive experience of being in a group. Just ask.

Joel :ok:

[1helicopterppl]

chopperchappie, could you possibly pm me please ?

[parasite drag]

"(unless you count dodgy home-builds)"

Hmmm..what are you on about Hands on123 ??

[hands_on123]

Rotorway


__________________________________________________________

[parasite drag]

Sorry for the thread-creep...but why are they dodgy ???????
Informed factual content please...no conjecture...

[hands_on123]

People build them in their garage.

They are not certified.

Some of them have a belt driven tail rotor.

They are over-represented in accident stats.

[helicopter-redeye]

Seriously cheap - compared to standard SFH rates. It does exist.



I think once you factor in insurance (paid once a year); hangerage and basing charges; fuel (Avgas is expensive) and the mortgage charges, its not CHEAP. It can only become AFFORDABLE because its divided up.

But there is also some low cost SFH around. The spread from high to low is now very big.

h-r

[krypton_john]

None of the above proves that any particular Rotorway is 'dodgy' but there's no doubt that many of them are just as many are of exceptionally good build quality.

However as they are non certified, the onus for mechanical safety moves from the LAME to the builder/owner so a much higher level of care and responsibility is required and that's definitely partly why the accident rate is high.

[chopperchappie]

redeye

In my opinion it is a question of perception and my perception is that cheap means about 30-40% less than the "normal" price.

Obviously paying insurance, hangar, maintenance and all the other things is an overhead which has to be dispersed by the number of people flying over the number of hours being flown, so if you only fly your own aircraft 25 hours a year - it's never going to be cheap, but if you are a multi-millionaire it's probably still affordable.

I agree perhaps cheap isn't the best word to use in conjunction with flying helicopters, despite the best efforts of people like Mr Robinson.

I do know that it is possible to get R44 SFH as low as £250-300+VAT particularly if you buy blocks, or it's an Astro/Raven 1 about to run out of time but still has hours, but I haven't seen anything like that in the London area for a Raven 2, generally we are talking over £100 ph more.

Anyone that knows where I can ad-hoc rent a Raven 2 for that kind of money - I'd be interested :-)

CC

[Pandalet]

I'm aware of an Astro on offer for £375/hr all in (includes fuel and VAT) in the N London area, no block booking required. Alternately, I know of a Raven II a bit further out for around £325 all in per hour. There was a recent post here offering a Raven II for £375 all in near Birmingham (with substantial discounts for booking 10 hour chunks). The group Joel posted offer a 44 for £200/month and £170/hr wet (based in Manchester) - JT, are those prices inc- or ex-VAT? There are plenty of options out there.

Alternately, you can go pay £450/hr to the London schools. If money isn't an option, or you're too busy/lazy to hunt around, I guess that's an option.

Something that should be considered is that if you're flying (say) 1 hour per month, assuming the group under discussion is offering something similar price-wise to JT's group, you can probablty hire ad-hoc from a school for about the same money, without needing to make a 6-month commitment or fight for availibility (depending on the school); so everyone in the group really needs to be flying several hours per month. Given that most people only fly over weekends, with any group larger then 4-ish people, it seems like even with a super-duper-computer booking system, you're going to end up with massive congestion over the weekends, having to rush back from whatever you're doing to have the aircraft back for the next 2-hour slot (or whatever).

[JimBall]

And with fuel around the UK now as high as £1.72+VAT per litre (around £2 gross for private/pleasure flying) , I wouldn't trust any quoted "wet" rate.

In some places its gone up 40p/l since last Autumn - which in most R44s = £24 extra an hour.

[chopperchappie]

Hi Pandalet

I am really keen to hear the details of the "Raven II a bit further out for around £325 all in per hour" can you PM me?

Almost forgot to say - Everyone is always concerned they wont get their fair share of bookings, but in a group people do have different work commitments and (like me) often work weekends.

Having said that, there are actually 16 hours between dusk and dawn on a summer day, which even if you say for every 2 hours flown takes 4 hours for pre-flight / post-flight is 8 useful flying hours per summer weekend day.

Let's say that two days a month are weathered off 6x 8h = 48h a month - so a group of say 10 people that only flew weekends would actually be flying about 5 hours a month. I wish I could afford to fly 5 hours every month and I wish I had the spare time to do it!

I know that isn't exactly how it works and people will want to take the helicopter away for the day and so on, but even if there's 10 people that fly 3-4 hours a month, that still means the aircraft is only used about 10% of the available flying hours.

Having been in and spoken to many sharing groups, consensus of opinion is that availability generally isn't the issue. Ironically though quite a few SFHs are suffering from less machines available and are struggling to make aircraft available as and when.

CC

[chopperchappie]

Hi JimBall

Yep - wet prices do depend on fuel costs.

But the idea is to be a bit sensible and adjust the per-hour-cost by the amount the fuel (or maintenance or whatever) changes.

So - comparing paying about half SFH costs and having to adjust that for fluctiations in actual operating costs, even if that's an extra £24, and just paying full SFH costs - erm...

Seems obvious to me!

At the end of the day fuel isn't going to go up forever with SFH rates going up as well is it? Whether you rent dry or wet you still have to pay the extra fuel costs if it goes up.

CC

[JimBall]

CC: I'm making the point that we're most definitely into a long period of rising costs - and not just fuel. We own and operate R44 Raven IIs and have done for years - so we know the true costs. And if your machine doesn't fly 300hrs annually, it will get very expensive.

With regard to weather - you should talk with the regular flyers at WAP and Denham. They certainly lose more than 2 days a month due to weather - and that's mainly with CPLs who have a lower vis limit than PPLs.

The lack of telemetry on the R44 will be the undoing of the whole thing. It is extremely hard to prove who did the engine or transmission overspeeds. You cannot rely upon insurance because one £20k+ payout for an engine will sock the premium. On a regular basis I have heard SFH "flyers" overspeed main rotors on final, start with the throttle open and take off without warming the engine correctly. (Fortunately, not on our machines.)

A main rotor overspeed can take 30-50 hrs to make itself known.

I would suggest that your owners in a share scheme should take a timed pic on their smartphone of the white-lined fan nut before and after flying - and email to whoever keeps the records. This would, at least, help monitor engine overspeeds on start-up.

Lord knows, the industry needs to get more PPLs flying. So any scheme that makes it affordable should be encouraged. But it must also stay viable.

[chopperchappie]

JimBall

Sorry I re-read my post and it wasn't clear - I meant 2 weekend days of the 8-10 that you get per summer month - not 2 days of the whole month.

I also saw a (real) statistic somewhere from met office that said something like for the south of England something like (can't remember exactly) 250-260 days a year on average meet "normal" VFR conditions. As we have already had January and February and half of March that were rubbish, I can only assume the rest of the year will be meeting VFR minima !! :)

Yes the intention is to ensure that the engine is not oversped by checking in and out at each flight.

Our cost estimates do assume a number of hours in line with your comments. That was something that popped out of the maths early!

Where are you based?

CC

[hands_on123]

Yes the intention is to ensure that the engine is not oversped by checking in and out at each flight.

Thats very hard to do. If you overspeed the engine or rotor in the R44, then there is virtually no physical record of it, unless the overspeed was very bad.

[chopperchappie]

Hi Yes, we would like to introduce a system where we photograph the fan nut which is one indicator and possibly fit a Nflightcam or similar if we can find a way to reliably "download" the data at the end of each day.

Is there another way I don't know about?

CC

[Figure Of Merit]

I have seen a datalogging device fitted to 22's that records RPM exceedances and has been used in at least one overspeed inicident to attribute blame in the right direction. Not sure where it got to in terms of approvals/certifications but I should be able to point you in the correct direction. PM me if you want more details.

[chopperchappie]

We are mostly more concerned with safety aspects of knowing that an overspeed incident has happened and carrying out the correct inspection and if required, remediation, than pointing the finger at who did it.

But it does beg the question with something as fundamentally important as this, why wouldn't Frank fit an overspeed warning light / buzzer which is going to record an overspeed and require a Robbo approved maintenance facility to reset the light after an overspeed inspection?

CC

[chopperchappie]

Hi Figure Of Merit

I didn't have any luck on the data-logging aspect as the guy you pointed me at has been quite busy.

In the meantime I did find a HD camera (motocam 360) that can record up to 12 hours HD (720p 30fps) and can be factory reconfigured so that it automatically starts recording when the aircraft breakers / ignition is switched on.

Assuming we can set the camera to see the instruments and (ideally) out of the cockpit as well, we can kill two birds with one stone.

There is another thread somewhere about cameras but I didn't see this one mentioned.

CC

[chopperchappie]

So we have been up and running for nearly two years now and everything has been going well - right up until the aircraft suffered the predicted overspeed.

The pilot fitted a big screen GPS that meant he couldn't fully see his feet, and admits they may have not been as correctly positioned to lift to the hover, but also feels he was slightly less aware of the situation developing than he could have been.

As he lifted to the hover the aircraft yawed and in an attempt to fly clear of other obstacles he pulled in more power too quickly and the governor couldn't manage the sudden input.

It's taken a while and there's been a few issues, frustration and tears but thanks to all that have helped to sort it out we are now back flying again with the engine overhauled.

In the spirit of passing on "lessons learned" there's two big ones;

1) Don't fly without thinking about your state of mind if it's less than 100% focussed on flying, have you got problems at home, feeling rough, headache, and don't try and fly and try out new kit for the first time solo, do it when you have got someone sitting next to you that can take control while you concentrate on your "toys", or better still just let someone else fly who can concentrate on the flying.

2) Everyone talks about overspeed on startup but very few people talk about overspeed on lift to the hover but it happens, after the event I found a website listing the (often) causes of overspeed and there it was number 2.

The importance of clearly reporting such an incident as an overspeed can not be over stressed - don't make assumptions that other people will just know. Make sure everyone knows and don't be shy about it. Don't even think about not reporting it. When the cam came out of our engine it was well deformed!

There is a new low cost "black box" that's being developed and we hope to get one fitted later this year (subject to EASA approvals), that we really think will help us identify which pilots are flying "well" and which pilots are heavy handed, we understand one of the main benefits will be a warning light if the aircraft has been oversped, just to re-enforce the incident reporting point.

Anyway - as a result of this overspeed incident one of the members has left the group and we have an open spot, I know this forum is not for advertising so see ebay, or www.helisharing.co.uk but apart from this one blip it has worked quite well but it is lots of effort.

In the scheme of things we did expect something like this to happen but hoped it wouldn't, nevertheless the scheme works well otherwise.

The main thing is that everyone has to have respect for the aircraft and not treat it like a rental car.

DF

[61 Lafite]

Maybe I'm missing something, but did he also over-speed the rotors?

Presumably he pulled in more power after the lift and didn't see (or hear) the RPM rise, but the clutch should have prevented the engine from going faster than the rotors so the engine can only over-speed as far as the rotors do. With the rotors, the damage problem initially is the bearings, not the blades.

He must have been low weight, otherwise I would have expected there to be a droop, not an over-speed, when he pulled in a lot of power, and that, in itself, would have caused more yaw.

I'd like to understand so I can try to avoid it happening to me!

Lafite

[zerosum]

61 Lafite makes a very good point.

The pilot admitted a certain level of distraction, is it just as possible that he raised the collective without actually switching on the governor and the correlator pushed up the rpm?

[chopperchappie]

Obviously I need to be sensitive and I wasn't in the aircraft so I am providing second hand information, but that said I understand that the;

a) Governor was engaged and operating "correctly" - however it can't always keep up (this is also true of high altitudes in the R44 - so I'm told)

b) Rotors were oversped and needed NDT inspection and new spindle bearings.

c) Aircraft was normal weight with passengers - in a Clipper that normally means near-ish MAUW as there's a weight penalty for the float system and often we don't fill both tanks to stay within limits with four up.

See; Overspeeds | Aeromega Helicopters (http://www.aeromega.com/overspeeds-2/)

CC

[staticsource]

From what I've seen during training you are unlikely to get an overspeed by just lifting the lever, unless it's a quick input. More likely the pilot is tense on the controls and has gripped the throttle too tightly and is overriding the governor.

Just my experience

Ss

[Aucky]

Tight grip - that'd more likely be my guess too. As you raise the collective from the ground the governor is trying to close the throttle, but a tight grip will stop it from doing so, RPM goes up. Easily done.

I also know of an R44 syndicate in Denham with a spare space, Clipper II, Garmin 430, GPS, bladders, all the toys... 1/4 share, £175/hr+fuel. PM if you'd like more info :ok:

[chopperchappie]

As I said - I wasn't there so I'm not going to say what it was or wasn't - from the pilot, he pulled power in suddenly in an attempt to transition to forward flight. Maybe he had a tight grip as well.

Anyway the key thing about the sharing scheme is that it's explicitly different to "owning" a quarter or whatever of the aircraft, which means it's low investment (about £5k) and substantially less per hour than Aucky indicated.

So there's a monthly subscription and £182 per hour wet. Obviously that's subject to change as fuel prices change.

What this means is people need to play ball and pay their bills on time as we have to manage the cash-flow without huge cash reserves.

CC

[13snoopy]

Chappie,

What your now former member claimed is nearly impossible (with the gov on) to accomplish. It almost sounds like his/her explanation was a really tall tale manufactured to cover up what actually happened.
If it were my helicopter, I'd look EVERYTHING over really closely.
Unfortunately, this is a perfect example of why you don't want partners owning a helicopter.

[heli1]

I have thought in the past about selling shares in a machine,but frankly would rather have the peace of mind that if anything goes wrong then it's down to me.I also tend to think that if you worry too much about the cost,then you probably can't afford it. I fly less than 100 hours a year now,mainly through waiting for parts every time my ancient machine has its annual or even six monthly check and it is true that EASA seems determined to price us all out of flying one way or another but ,once I get airborne on a lovely day like this last weekend ,it all seems worth it !:):):)

[Thomas coupling]

Chopper chappie - you sound like an 'awfully nice chap', from all accounts, none more than trusting in your fellow colleagues to play ball when it comes to behaving themselves when it comes to sharing the chopper.

From my perspective - 13snoopy has it in one. Would you share your wife with anyone (don't answer that!) so why share the next thing which will kill you if you don't look after it!!!?
You either don't have much of a survival instinct or you are maybe a little green behind the ears??
I suspect he took off without the governor switched on.

[Hughes500]

Surely you guys are insured against one off events, if with Haywards you would be thus only have to pay xs plus loss of no claims ?

[readgeoff]

I am a member of this group and can confirm that Chopper Chappie is a very nice chap :O

On the subject of sharing vs owning clearly if I could afford to own a machine outright and park it in own garden I would do that but I am not in that boat (just yet).

So the choice is to share a machine with 9 other like minded pilots, all of whom I have flown with or to take a self hire machine which has all the same inherent problems associated with someone else having flown it before me.

The issues are also the same for anyone owning their own machine and leasing it back to a flying school for training to try and make the numbers work.

Other than this overspeed blip the group has worked very well, is more cost effective than self fly hiring, has surprisingly good availability and we regularly go flying with each other so I get to go places and see things that I almost certainly would not be doing if I wasn't in the group. We also do group learning days with have been very valuable.