Bell 505 Jet Ranger X
Errrrr ...and the fact that you can buy three 505,s for the price of one 407 !! Add to that the broom cupboard....I have used the 407 a number of times heliskiing and it’s not very comfortable in the back and quite tight and poor outside viz .
The more I think about it the more I think the 505 with 3 or 4 blades and an extra seat would be a squirrel basher !!
The more I think about it the more I think the 505 with 3 or 4 blades and an extra seat would be a squirrel basher !!
Who cares about the back. You are flying it....
I think if you flew one you might change your mind...
3 x the price? A good used one would not be double the cost of a 505, and is in a different league altogether.
And they are just way better looking...
I think if you flew one you might change your mind...
3 x the price? A good used one would not be double the cost of a 505, and is in a different league altogether.
And they are just way better looking...
Hi what are running costs like ? I am sure it’s a great machine but the 505 gives much more bang for your buck and I think a reasonable chance of appreciating rather than depreciating!!!
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Just read a pilot report in Aviation International News mag on the 505. Two pages of largely drivel by one Alexa Paprosky, who is claimed to be a CPL, and not one reference to its cruise speed, fuel burn or climb rate! Useless! And I find this so often with flight tests - what we really want to know is what matters most to us; primarily real world fast cruise speeds, with reference to weight, altitude etc, and the fuel burn at this speed, with a realistic range. And a comment on smoothness can be useful, if very subjective.
And yet time and again in media pilot reports we just get chapter and verse on start up procedures, instrumentation, low speed handling, emergency procedures etc, all of which we just get used to anyway and are unlikely to be purchase decision factors.
As someone who had 2000 happy hours in 206s in my early days I'd like to know what the 505 is really like and here was an opportunity missed!
And yet time and again in media pilot reports we just get chapter and verse on start up procedures, instrumentation, low speed handling, emergency procedures etc, all of which we just get used to anyway and are unlikely to be purchase decision factors.
As someone who had 2000 happy hours in 206s in my early days I'd like to know what the 505 is really like and here was an opportunity missed!
Best article I’ve found on 505
http://www.collectivemag.com/first-c...l-505-jrx/amp/
They say they held 110-120 kts consistently throughout their cross country flight with MCP.
They say they held 110-120 kts consistently throughout their cross country flight with MCP.
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Cross Country in the Bell 505 JRX - How Does it Perform? | Heliweb Magazine
They say they held 110-120 kts consistently throughout their cross country flight with MCP.
They say they held 110-120 kts consistently throughout their cross country flight with MCP.
The performance described in this article would be on par with the performance of our R66, but with less endurance.
Nigel, using Conklin Deckers summary as a comparison, the 407 is about 33% more per hour to operate. It is however in a different league performance wise.
Last edited by BigMike; 21st Mar 2018 at 00:17.
It’s not a bad article. I’m definitely not brave enough to take sides in this argument, but 110-120 at MCP with 2 POB seems quite a way off a claimed 125+ at MAUW?
The performance described in this article would be on par with the performance of our R66, but with less endurance.
The performance described in this article would be on par with the performance of our R66, but with less endurance.
Midland Texas is some 2,600’ AMSL and El Paso 3,500+ so what was the cruise altitude? The report gives a 100F temperature on departure from Midland so they are challenging temperatures and altitudes which may push the TAS out to the claimed 125kts true.
Oh dear. Well this is awkward.
Mike the BellBlade published the link to the article in COLLECTIVE Magazine written by one Ryan Mason. Now, I sort of "know" Ryan from the Facebook HPN page. He's a nice guy, and one hell of a photographer! But he's not an...actual...you know...pilot. No rating. Not even a student certificate. He's had some dual instruction, but apparently not enough to solo or get rated.
After he published that extensive article on the 505 in his magazine, I took him to task for not providing things like fuel burn, ride quality (comparative to its competitors), power vs. speed figures, cabin pitch attitude in cruise...you know...stuff that you'd expect to see in a normal pilot-report. I mean, after all, he flew it (or more correctly, flew *in* it) for FIVE HOURS. Surely he could've given us an idea of the fuel burn! But no. It was only then that Ryan admitted that he's not an actual...you know...pilot.
Oh.
But hey, that doesn't make his observations invalid. It simply means that he's not an experienced, qualified aircraft evaluator. And to his credit, he does sort of admit that a couple of times in the article. Fortunately he's a helicopter guy through-and-through – he loves these crazy contraptions as much as anyone. And he's flown *in* a bunch of helicopters.
But let's face it, like most people who get to fly a brand-new, mostly-newly-designed machine, he was "wowed" by all the gee-whiz stuff like the FADEC and Garmin G1000, both of which have been around long enough that guys like me aren't impressed anymore. (The G1000 debuted in 2007. It's old.) Maybe it was sensory-overload, I don't know. Not to put him down, but a guy like Ryan would probably get all giggly if he got some cross-country stick-time in an old UH-1 retrofitted with a G1000. I would too. But I'd keep my objectivity.
An admittedly-dated Garmin avionics suite doesn't do anything for the design of the aircraft; it just gives us more and (for some pilots) new toys to play with. And FADEC is nice, but it doesn't really decrease the pilot's workload, come on, other than during the start. The easily-impressed will say, "Oooooh, but you won't have to monitor the RRPM so closely in flight!" Yeah you're right. And if you don't fly like Chuck Friggin' Aaron in his Bolkow you won't have to do that in your 206A either. Let's put it this way: In all my years of flying Bell 206's (which is more than three decades), I never considered the wandering MRRPM to be a nuisance or distraction. I don't pull or push faster than the torque gauge can move. If the RPM didn't stay within limits it got written up and the governor got changed.
Whatever...
Everyone seems impressed with the 505's performance. What...did Bell rewrite the laws of physics? IT'S A LONGRANGER! A short LongRanger, that is (Bell should have called it the SLR). Actually, it's a fairly weak, 500 h.p. LongRanger...kind of like an old L-1 with a slightly faster rotor. “But the 505 is lighter!!” Well, maybe not *much* lighter. Again, the COLLECTIVE article failed to mention the empty weight of Steve Urschel's ship. But Bell says that the empty weight is 2,180 pounds, so let's go with that. Add 360 for the pax, 100 for the bags, and 575 for the fuel and we get...about 3,215 pounds, which is about 700 pounds or so heavier than the empty weight of the L-1's I used to fly when I was at PHI. So again, not much lighter than an L-model. Maybe I'm misremembering that...I am getting old. Maybe they were 2,700 pounds. Still...with just me and some fuel, my PHI L-1 would weigh about the same as Urschel's 505.
People are trying to make this 505 out to be some new super-copter. Dear God, according to some, you'd think it was a civilian reincarnation of Airwolf! Time will tell. Eventually some 505's will be released here in the U.S. instead of all of them oddly being sent overseas first. Eventually one will be flown by an actual pilot with actual experience in objectively evaluating aircraft (like Guy Maher's piece in VERTICAL) and a GoPro focused on the panel. Maybe then we'll get some real-world, quantifiable numbers, not the breathless, “Oh-my-God, FADEC! The throttle's a toggle-switch!!!” PR hype we've gotten so far.
Maybe.
Mike the BellBlade published the link to the article in COLLECTIVE Magazine written by one Ryan Mason. Now, I sort of "know" Ryan from the Facebook HPN page. He's a nice guy, and one hell of a photographer! But he's not an...actual...you know...pilot. No rating. Not even a student certificate. He's had some dual instruction, but apparently not enough to solo or get rated.
After he published that extensive article on the 505 in his magazine, I took him to task for not providing things like fuel burn, ride quality (comparative to its competitors), power vs. speed figures, cabin pitch attitude in cruise...you know...stuff that you'd expect to see in a normal pilot-report. I mean, after all, he flew it (or more correctly, flew *in* it) for FIVE HOURS. Surely he could've given us an idea of the fuel burn! But no. It was only then that Ryan admitted that he's not an actual...you know...pilot.
Oh.
But hey, that doesn't make his observations invalid. It simply means that he's not an experienced, qualified aircraft evaluator. And to his credit, he does sort of admit that a couple of times in the article. Fortunately he's a helicopter guy through-and-through – he loves these crazy contraptions as much as anyone. And he's flown *in* a bunch of helicopters.
But let's face it, like most people who get to fly a brand-new, mostly-newly-designed machine, he was "wowed" by all the gee-whiz stuff like the FADEC and Garmin G1000, both of which have been around long enough that guys like me aren't impressed anymore. (The G1000 debuted in 2007. It's old.) Maybe it was sensory-overload, I don't know. Not to put him down, but a guy like Ryan would probably get all giggly if he got some cross-country stick-time in an old UH-1 retrofitted with a G1000. I would too. But I'd keep my objectivity.
An admittedly-dated Garmin avionics suite doesn't do anything for the design of the aircraft; it just gives us more and (for some pilots) new toys to play with. And FADEC is nice, but it doesn't really decrease the pilot's workload, come on, other than during the start. The easily-impressed will say, "Oooooh, but you won't have to monitor the RRPM so closely in flight!" Yeah you're right. And if you don't fly like Chuck Friggin' Aaron in his Bolkow you won't have to do that in your 206A either. Let's put it this way: In all my years of flying Bell 206's (which is more than three decades), I never considered the wandering MRRPM to be a nuisance or distraction. I don't pull or push faster than the torque gauge can move. If the RPM didn't stay within limits it got written up and the governor got changed.
Whatever...
Everyone seems impressed with the 505's performance. What...did Bell rewrite the laws of physics? IT'S A LONGRANGER! A short LongRanger, that is (Bell should have called it the SLR). Actually, it's a fairly weak, 500 h.p. LongRanger...kind of like an old L-1 with a slightly faster rotor. “But the 505 is lighter!!” Well, maybe not *much* lighter. Again, the COLLECTIVE article failed to mention the empty weight of Steve Urschel's ship. But Bell says that the empty weight is 2,180 pounds, so let's go with that. Add 360 for the pax, 100 for the bags, and 575 for the fuel and we get...about 3,215 pounds, which is about 700 pounds or so heavier than the empty weight of the L-1's I used to fly when I was at PHI. So again, not much lighter than an L-model. Maybe I'm misremembering that...I am getting old. Maybe they were 2,700 pounds. Still...with just me and some fuel, my PHI L-1 would weigh about the same as Urschel's 505.
People are trying to make this 505 out to be some new super-copter. Dear God, according to some, you'd think it was a civilian reincarnation of Airwolf! Time will tell. Eventually some 505's will be released here in the U.S. instead of all of them oddly being sent overseas first. Eventually one will be flown by an actual pilot with actual experience in objectively evaluating aircraft (like Guy Maher's piece in VERTICAL) and a GoPro focused on the panel. Maybe then we'll get some real-world, quantifiable numbers, not the breathless, “Oh-my-God, FADEC! The throttle's a toggle-switch!!!” PR hype we've gotten so far.
Maybe.
FH1100 ... as I can see it , YOU are the only one getting all animated about the 505 . I haven’t heard anyone state it was the best thing around . Even myself , and I am buying one , see it as a compromise.
It’s a Long Ranger with a smaller , but open plan , cockpit with some quite nice avionics . Main point is it’s CHEAP , actually unbelievably cheap and will no doubt get a hefty price hike soon ( it has already had one ) . It is almost the same price as a nice v late 206 used to fetch , It is half the price of an MD500 and Long Ranger and only a little more than the R66 ....... which is a Robinson !! So you Stop getting yourself all pumped up about it ,worrying that it might actually be a decent Helicoper and leave that to somebody who is actually going to fly one . What difference does it make to you if it’s good , great or useless??
I will try to give some info as soon as I have flown it .... warts and all !!
It’s a Long Ranger with a smaller , but open plan , cockpit with some quite nice avionics . Main point is it’s CHEAP , actually unbelievably cheap and will no doubt get a hefty price hike soon ( it has already had one ) . It is almost the same price as a nice v late 206 used to fetch , It is half the price of an MD500 and Long Ranger and only a little more than the R66 ....... which is a Robinson !! So you Stop getting yourself all pumped up about it ,worrying that it might actually be a decent Helicoper and leave that to somebody who is actually going to fly one . What difference does it make to you if it’s good , great or useless??
I will try to give some info as soon as I have flown it .... warts and all !!
Helicopter Prices
Nigel,
I was actually pondering this myself yesterday evening so I looked up the launch price for the 206A in 1967, it was $89,500.
(Source: http://www.heli-archive.ch/en/helico...6a-jet-ranger/)
In today’s dollars that’s, $667,206.42. You have to remember that this was before the litigation explosion in the US so for Bell to offer the 505 at $1M in today’s world, with the added avionics suite and all the product liability cost is a fantastic achievement.
Regardless of whether you like the design, Bell have done extremely well commercially to offer a fully certified 5-place helicopter at this price point. FACT.
Of course they could have innovated more and provided a more complex machine, but it would have cost more and to get into the market these days you have to compete with the R66.
I haven’t flown the 505 yet (I would like to), but love the 206 and have spent some time in the 505 mock ups and found it much more appealing in the flesh than on screen. It’s big and feels like a proper helicopter.
CRAN
I was actually pondering this myself yesterday evening so I looked up the launch price for the 206A in 1967, it was $89,500.
(Source: http://www.heli-archive.ch/en/helico...6a-jet-ranger/)
In today’s dollars that’s, $667,206.42. You have to remember that this was before the litigation explosion in the US so for Bell to offer the 505 at $1M in today’s world, with the added avionics suite and all the product liability cost is a fantastic achievement.
Regardless of whether you like the design, Bell have done extremely well commercially to offer a fully certified 5-place helicopter at this price point. FACT.
Of course they could have innovated more and provided a more complex machine, but it would have cost more and to get into the market these days you have to compete with the R66.
I haven’t flown the 505 yet (I would like to), but love the 206 and have spent some time in the 505 mock ups and found it much more appealing in the flesh than on screen. It’s big and feels like a proper helicopter.
CRAN
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Nigelh. Waiting and watching every day with great interest on news
of your 21st March flight in the 505. Please let us know as soon as you
can. I and many others would value your opinion. Best Regards
Claudia.
of your 21st March flight in the 505. Please let us know as soon as you
can. I and many others would value your opinion. Best Regards
Claudia.
