1) It's great fun
2) It's well worth a tenner
3) It bears little resemblence to flying a real helicopter

ASnd as Muffin's already told you, I speak from experience.

Hilico - Why? are you great fun for a tenner? ;)

Whirlygig

It couldn't be the 7 degree washout on the R22 blades could it?

bugdev :

I think you need to see an AME. The blades can seem to bend forward or backwards, depend on where you look at them from. Personally I think they're straight, just like most other helicopter blades.

R22 blades
 

Thanks for the feedback so far,but i have checked the set of blades i have spare, and they definately have a curve on them. when you consider the torque involved in spinning up around 30lb of blade in which there is a 2lb tip weight plus the forces induced when the pitch is increased it would not seem surprising for some distortion to take place after a couple of thousand hours.If my theory is correct then it follows that there should be an increase in blade thickness at about 6 feet out from the root.Iwill check this tomorrow. Is this possibly one of the reasons the blades have time limit on them?

Like Nr said: If these blades are secondhand and "bent", then you should be getting the appropriate info from the manufacturer to determine their servicability. This could save you from any grief.

Are you using a reference point to see the curve (ie have you measured it?)
Is the curve at the LE as well as the TE ?

Saw something somewhere (?!) recently that makes me think there's a heli sim at the "Star World" (??) leisure complex alongside the M6 at Birmingham.

Was up there a couple of weeks ago and planned to have a look, but time ran out.

Sorry to be so vague; can't remember exactly what I read or where, but it's some hovercraft like jobby? Anyone know any more?

RC

It looks great!!!! can't we turn EVERY robbo into one? Just think of the lives that would be saved!!:O

When you learn to fly a robbo, what do you do for the rest of the day:rolleyes:

learning to fly a Robinson
 

I recently purchased a book entitled "how to fly helicopters".just to be on the safe side, i tied the machine down on four corners just leaving enough slack so that i could get the skids six inches off the ground. my first attempt without the ropes resulted in a one eighty turn before i could flick to page two.(I find it damned difficult to hold the book). After a few goes , no problem, cracked this hoverin job. Question is, should i cut the ropes and go for it.

By way of some history - Bolkow made a "semi-static" trainer in the early 60's, consisting of an almost-flying helicopter (with a single rotor blade!) attached to a platform. A place was provided for an instructor to sit on the left side. I found some photos:

http://www.internetage.com/rotorcraft/history1.htm
http://avia.russian.ee/vertigo/bo-102-r.html
http://www.helis.com/50s/h_bo1023.php

Last weekend I got a good look at the example owned by the Hiller Aviation Museum in San Carlos, California - I'd sure like to try it, but they won't fire it up!

Dave Blevins

Mr Selfish! (Surely you could come up with a better nickname than that!!)

Anyway the latest that I heard was that the main rotor blade tracking and balance properties were out of alignment and consequently the tail boom was severed in flight and directional control was lost.

Why did this happen 30-40 minutes into the flight though. Why didn't it happen in hover taxi or t/o??

The witness on the ground though said that the helicopter was falling to pieces as it came crashing down.

Someone else may be able to correct me here but this is the latest info that I have.

R22 Blade Cracking
 

http://www.casa.gov.au/avreg/aircraf...22/r22-031.pdf


Have a look at the latest AD that CASA has put out in response to the Robbie falling out of the sky in Sydney...

Any chance of a link ?

The CASA media release,

New safety inspections for Robinson 22 helicopters have been ordered following a fatal accident near Sydney late last month.

An urgent airworthiness directive has been issued today by the Civil Aviation Safety Authority for the inspection of main rotor blades for cracking.

This follows preliminary investigations of the 20 June accident at Warragamba by the Australian Transport Safety Bureau (ATSB).

The investigation has shown the main rotor blade failed at the inboard end of the bolted joint.

The Airworthiness Directive requires visual and eddy current inspections of the blades and the fitting of a special vibration warning placard in the helicopter cockpit.

The eddy current inspections must be carried out as blades reach 1500 hours time in service, with those blades already beyond 1500 hours requiring inspections by 31 July 2003. These inspections must be repeated every 200 hours in service.

The manufacturer requires main rotor blades in R22 helicopters to be replaced at 2200 hours time in service.

The warning placard states: "If main rotor vibration increases rapidly or becomes severe during a flight, land immediately". This is based on an alert from the manufacturer that states unusual vibration can indicate a main rotor blade crack.

CASA's Directive also orders both visual and eddy current inspections before further flight if an R22 has suffered severe main rotor vibration during a flight or if there is an unexplained main rotor unbalance.

CASA's Director of Aviation Safety, Mick Toller, says the authority is working closely with the ATSB as investigations into last month's accident continue.

"CASA and the ATSB have acted quickly to make sure there is no immediate threat to safety," Mr Toller says.

"Clearly, there is still more to discover from the investigation and we are committed to learning all the lessons to minimise the risk of further accidents.

"CASA is also exchanging information and ideas with the US Federal Aviation Administration because that's where the R22s were designed and built."

Media contact
Peter Gibson
Ph 0419 296 446
Ref: MR0336


CASA page

Didn't a 22 have a blade crack last year in the U.K? The pilot recognised there was an issue and got it down fast.

I do hope this isn't the start of a serious problem for Robinson.

Yes, there was a safety alert issued in June last year as a result of a blade cracking near the root.

http://www.pprune.org/forums/showthr...threadid=58410

Sounds distressingly similar to the Sydney situation :(

I know we had to have our blades examined as a result of this safety alert. I wonder if the same inspections were ordered in Australia ?

Thats from the link to the site above, can you believe you can actually take off with only 40hp (probibly not with my weight though);)

Grainger: As far as I can tell, the new AD that has been "issued", is actually the 4th amendment of a current AD that has been around for some time. (since 1990?) There is reference to the R22 SL-53 and -21A.

The rumour that was mentioned in the other thread regarding timex blades being used, if true, will obvously compound any existing faults in the blades.
An eddy current inspection every 200 hours on all M/R blades is going to be a real pain especially for remote location operators.

First my condolences to the families of the two pilots involved. Unfortunately I did not have the privilege to know either one.

What I read on this topic the PIC was a rather coolheaded, down to the facts pilot and not prone to let a student get in over the limits or doing any stunts to impress the student.

So one must guess that something was wrong with the machine.

Concerning the warning lights in the Robinson: The POH mentions that if the clutch light starts to FLICKER, upper bearing failure MAY be imminent, and a landing has to be done immediately. (Upper bearing of the belt sheaves) Though I never heard of any accident caused by this. The closest I ever "saw" was a R-22 belt failure - one of the microswitches involved in the clutch mechanism failed and the clutch would run to max extension before stopped by an end-switch. After 200 hours abuse of the belts they snapped - sucessful autorotation - new belts and microswitch - back in the air ever since. You might want to blame the pilot for this, as it takes nearly two minutes to get to the endswitch whereas a regular clutch engagement should take no more than 1 min with a normal retensioning of about 6-10 seconds after about 5 min flight. Normally a student is told to watch for the time and note changes over time)

I read an accident statistic about Robinson´s, MD´s and Bell´s today (I will post the source tomorrow...) and the Robinson´s win hands down.
Just amazing, that whenever a Robinson comes down, someone wants to cancel all of them, Winnie- you start to sound like Lu at his "best" times, personally I think you do not know what you talk about - there is nothing flimsy at all on either of the R-helicopters, just because it is lightweight it doesn´t make it flimsy - I had the chance to see a R-44 accident - by pure pilot missjudgement - this machine can take an immense amount of abuse before it gives up!! Show me any other helicopter in the respective class that can get even near the R´s and still take half the abuse.
It is just natural that more R´s show up at accidents, as the fleet grows unproportionally fast compared to the other brands. Plus most R´s are used for hard core work. And still they stay at the top of the statistics by a good margin. Most accidents attributed to pilot error.

It is suspect to me, that in this case time-expired blades are mentioned (just like constant over limit abuse in the last case in Latin America....). This has nothing to do with recent maintenance, you can do maintenance all day long, if the blades are overtime it changes nothing.

Though I doubt Mr. Shannon would have kept flying with an out of track&balance R-22, as these start to vibrate rather pronounced if out of limits.

I hope the real cause of the failure will be found and the responsable person is found - if time expired parts are involved he/she should get live for manslaughter - like the case in NZ with the fake TR blades some time back.


I am sad for the loss of an obviously all around profesional pilot and an aspiring student, but I think before putting the blame on the machine and with this on the designer and builder, lets wait what comes up as the cause of the accident.


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