Jim Rapier

A member of the Philip Greenspun's Homepage community since November 2, 2005

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November 2, 2005, on Learning to Fly Helicopters:
After learning about some people who have flown their RotorWay helicopters on 5,000 mile trips, I decided to take my RotorWay on a cross cousntry trip of only 1,300 miles. I knew that from flying an R22 that I would definitely prefer flying the RotorWay over the R22 anytime, but was not at all sure how well and reliable mine would be on a long trip. I had added a Lowrance 2000C GPS to the RotorWay, and that, with its FADEC system, I found the trip to be easy, and the helicopter to be a stable and reliable platform. Many people had told me that they thought that flying a helicopter was very tiring, but I have to say that I was not very tired even when flying all day. In fact, it took only a light touch on the cyclic and collective and peddle inputs were minimal on the entire flight. My one maintenance item was after about 1,000 miles it was necessary to tighten the drive belts to the secondary, but outside of that the machine just flew uneventfully. On several legs where winds aloft show...