Episode 407: "Do You Think Robinson Helicopters Are Safe?"

Any questions? This is coming from Reicher 735, and he just wants to know from a pro, how safe are Robinson helicopter pilots? Or, I'm sorry, Robinson helicopters, in your opinion? Great question. This comes up all the time and I talk about it frequently. We have a video that I just did within the last few weeks called, you know, Robinson Helicopters. Love them or hate them, right? And here's this is. I'm going to give you my observation, right? Because somebody said, oh, that's not a good title. Love them or hate him. It's just a fact of this or that. And it was just a title to get people talking, right? Because what I see, in my opinion, either people love the Robinson and they just absolutely love them, or you make a post about a Robinson and then people will jump in and they're like 100% the other side. They're just like, oh, oh, damn, Robinson. You know, and so it's like there really seems like they're on both ends of the spectrum, right? People love them, that fly them and have a lot of time in them. And usually the people that are bashing them don't. They don't usually have a lot of time in them. And I only say that because our examiner made a statement about, I don't know, 10 or 15 years ago. I thought made a lot of sense. He said, the people that talk super negative of a Robinson most of the time will have 10 hours or less, or they've never even flown one. They. They just either they haven't been in it and they're going off what they heard, or they got just a little bit of time in it and immediately decided they hated it. With me, when I first climbed in them, I hated the cyclic. I thought it sucked. However, my instructor says, hey, it's still a helicopter. The inputs are still the same. Don't worry about it. And then over time, I learned to like the Robinson with my experience. I went to the Robinson safety course early in my career. After I got my private. This would have been like 99 or something. It was the late 90s. I went to the Robinson factory, and the Robinson factory is very open and honest. And they say, look, in the beginning, 1 in 10 helicopters that left the factory, I think was the number one in ten that leave the factory didn't make it to their location. Right. Their destination. That sounds pretty scary and that sounds pretty bad, right? So they say in the beginning, in the very beginning, you know, here's what was wrong with the aircraft. Here's where we went wrong as a helicopter manufacturer. And then they also talk about, you know, like, we now have the SFAR in place, right, to really hone in certain things that a person needs to be aware of before they start flying a helicopter. Like low G. Well, it pertains to any helicopter out there, but just in Robinson, they're more susceptible to a low G event if you go forward. But with the proper training, they can be safe. So Robinson will show you where they were in the beginning and where they are today. And I can't remember the numbers to tell you, but we're talking a scale from not very safe in the beginning to the safety being increased, you know, by hundreds of times over the years because they took what they learned, they fixed the problems with the aircraft, continue to do those times of maneuvers, and then the SBAR 73 training that we all. We all say is a pain in the ass. We do. Right. However, with that being said, that SFAR 73 training is good training, and it's good for anything that you fly. So if you start in the Robinson and you go through the SFAR training, it's actually holding you to a higher standard, in my opinion. It's all the things that you need to know anyway, as a private or getting into helicopters, There's a certain amount of things you need to know. Right. With the SBAR 73, they're just honing it in harder. Low RPM, low G. All these bad things that can happen virtually in any helicopter, you just get them, they're honed in more, they're brought to the forefront. SR73, although we all like to complain about being a pain in the ass, it's actually a good thing. And I'm sure that it has saved lives. And I can tell you what, Robinson, hands down, has the best training on the planet. I've flown instruments, I've flown Switzer's, I've flown Cabris, I've flown Robinsons, all the trainers. Robinson has the best training, the best factory school, from what I can tell. I haven't even been offered any other factory schools. But the factory school, their flight syllable training that they put out, what I've seen over the years, Robinson, hands down, has the best training. So do I think they're safe? That was the question. Yeah, I think so. I'm operating an R22 and I'm operating an R44. With that being said, do I stick to what we all learn as a private pilot? Yes. Doing what these helicopters are built for, flying them the way they're intended to, being flown and doing the maintenance on them. This is another one that sure, when you take Robinson the mo, the most popular civil training helicopter in the world, more helicopters in a Robin's than anything. Of course you're going to have more accidents just in terms of the amount of numbers I'm telling you, they've increased over the years, the safety margin. So maintenance is sometimes a maintenance problem could be the reason something happened. And maybe you didn't hear that that's the reason or you didn't investigate. Maintenance can be cheated on any helicopter. It doesn't matter where it's a Robinson. It doesn't matter whether it's an instrument. How scrupulous the people they're doing the maintenance, the flight school owners, you've got people that spend the money and have immaculate helicopters well taken care of, where the maintenance is 100%. But you got a lot of shady operators out there too. That because they're not making a lot of money. Flight schools in general, it's hard to make money for flight school. It's just the way it is. So a flight school buy a couple helicopters, or at least a couple helicopters, they start taking money in on account, helicopter breaks. So a little bit of that money that was supposed to go here has to go to there. Then pretty soon you're falling behind on payments. And I've been there, done that. I did that with the instrument I owned 15 years ago, super, super hard. So a lot of times, because schools aren't generating the kind of money that they need to to properly do the pay the bills and keep on top of the maintenance, sometime maintenance starts to slide a little bit. I often bring up the interview with Tim Tucker from Robinson Helicopter. Many people know who Tim is. If you've been around Robinson for years, and we asked him at Heli Expo, we said, hey, which helicopter should somebody fly when they start their raining? Which helicopter is best or start their training? And he's standing right in front of Robinson as we're doing the video. And he said, kenny, I don't think it makes a difference which helicopter you fly. He said, I think the Robinson, the instrument, the Cadbury, the Switzerland, all great helicopters, if they're maintained, the proper maintenance is done and you have a reputable flight school with reputable instructors who are doing the job right. I think hands down is more important than the make and model of the aircraft. So I think my opinion, yeah, they're safe, I fly them, I take my daughter and my friends and family up in them. And if I didn't think they were safe, I wouldn't fly them. On the other spectrum of that, I don't go out and do macho cowboy stupid. I don't go out and do things that the helicopter wasn't designed to do. I like to go out there and follow the rules. Fly very conservative, fly slow, smooth and methodical. And I think if you do the proper maintenance on a Robinson and you fly it the way it's intended to be flown and you get the proper training from a qualified Robinson instructor, I think that you will. Chances are you're going to be just fine. And our clone is located@askhogs.com you can go below and click on the link to go check it out. 24 hours a day, seven days a week, you can ask training related questions. Flight and ground 14 years of my contents loaded in this thing. Blogs, podcasts, videos, paid content, free content. There's over 6 million words piped into my clone. It's amazing. Go down below ask hogs.com the clone is free to everyone and the clone is also inside of our hog site on every video, every page. So you can be in viewing videos. And you can always ask the clone a question while you're at it so you can get an immediate answer first. Right here is free free PDF private pilot 101 helicopter training blueprint that's why we created this. And let me cover what's in the first chapter since you ask and you're at the beginning. That's why we created this. The first chapter are questions that we've we took like the top 10 questions that we get all the time. Like is learning how to fly a helicopter difficult? How long will it take to become a private pilot? How much will it cost to become a private pilot? What is the best approach to selecting a flight school? What are the key differences between helicopters and fixed wing aircraft? How many tests will I have to take? How many hours for solo on the license? Kenny's recommended training supplies. So this is absolutely 100 free. You can go down below, there's a link down below. 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