When a 10,000 hour Robison instructor is killed by a student doing exactly that manoeuvre (near Bournemouth in the 90s) you have to wonder if the cyclic position played a part.

If that's G-PUDD in 1994, then the instructor had 7,170 hours on helicopters and 5,200 on type flying with a a 4,000 hour FW, 40 hours gyroplane and 22 hours on type ATPL. And we don't know from the report who had hands on, but I'd expect an FI with that many hours on type to be well ahead of the game.

I used to fly this miracle, back when I was doing the "All of the fun, none of the guilt" Episcopalian trip. I could also fly a Bell 206 LR, but not as well as Bach's Toccata and Fugue in D Minor! 5,130 pipes. When I kicked in the Celestials, I would weep for the beauty of the sound...

https://cimg1.ibsrv.net/gimg/pprune....7f7ef67d8c.jpg


https://cimg0.ibsrv.net/gimg/pprune....8e7141672a.jpg


- Ed

Well if you are going to show your organ on social media, better make it a big one:)

yes you would, but it still killed him and convinced me not to pursue any further forays into civ instruction on the R22.

I haven't been in an R22 / R44 cabin for quite some years (as an enthusiast), but all this discussion made me curious why the Robinson T-bar cyclic isn't well liked. It seems the main issue is that the cyclic grip of the non-flying pilot is high above their knees when the grip of the flying pilot is at knee level during training flights: In this video of Maria Langer practicing autos and CFI Trevor Hale monitoring, I see that during the autos, he always raises his hand to be ready to grip the cyclic quickly if anything starts to go wrong (see from 7:00 onwards and then again for each subsequent practice auto). But holding arm up would become tiring if doing so for a whole day while flying with less experienced pilots in control than in this case:
Aside from the STC modification images shared by hargreaves99, wouldn't it have been fairly straightforward to have a T-bar cyclic that is actual a "T" shape rather than the "Y" of the R22/44? That could at least have been done for any machines routinely used for training. Even an adjustable "T-bar" cross-bar wouldn't add much weight or complexity if further height adjustment was needed for long or short legs on either side. Then the grip could be at knee level for both pilots. The grip would still be able to flop up and down (the extra DOF that Wide_Moth_Frog noted), but is that an issue once the arms of both pilots can comfortably rest on their knees?