Building The Rotorway Kit Helicopter

Executive Decision: THE FINAL CHAPTER

With hover school final assembly and instrument outfitting under his built, Ray Sebastian’s construction odyssey ends with plans for a rotary future.

ARTICLE DATE: November 1986

It’s been months since our seventh installment (February 1986) on building the Rotorway Exec helicopter, that fabulous two-place medium-range helicopter that’s revolutionized the homebuilt industry. Now it’s time to break out the champagne because Ray Sebastian’s Exec is complete, and a beautiful piece of work it is indeed.

In this, our eighth and final piece on Builder Ray’s devoted odyssey, we’ll dispense with most of the verbiage and let the pictures treat you to the feast (except for the companion piece on Sebastian’s five days at the RotorWay Hover School.

You don’t want to miss that). In April of this year, Sebastian met a fellow builder, Gary Wilson of Palmdale, Calif., through the RotorWay factory. Wilson, a building contractor in his mid-30s, had bought all seven stages of the kit at one time and was determined to go hell-bent for leather and build his ship in the absolute minimum time.

Since Sebastian had done his Rotorway Exec helicopter from the outside in, by constructing and assembling the frame, tail boom, rotor head and controls before installing the engine and drive system, he was the ideal person to assist Wilson, who was building his ship from the inside out.

Looking up and forward from rear of chopper at engine. Curved pipe at bottom foreground is engine coolant tube. Springed tubes are pushrod tubes.

In fact, Wilson finished his entire engine compartment in only one month, an impressive accomplishment by anybody’s standards. Thus began a working partnership that had Builder Ray driving 2 hours round trip to the desert in the evenings and most every weekend.

He squeezed his ship into Wilson’s three-car garage for the interim and advised Wilson on his own Exec. When Wilson’s ship was done in an incredible four months, it was his turn to assist Sebastian with fitting the RV 152 engine to the already completed airframe.

By July, both ships were done, and now Ray Sebastian has a flying buddy, not to mention one of the most stunning aircraft around. But would he do it all over again? He winks, smiles and pats his shiny new baby. “What do you think?”

The Adventures Of Hover Man With His Rotorway Exec Helicopter

A boy and his steed. Ray Sebastian applies trim tape to the landing gear struts.

A homebuilt project isn’t finished just because the airplane is ready to fly, you know. Even the simplest ultralight would have a fool for a pilot who flew without at least an airspeed, altimeter and engine temp gauge.

Gary Wilson and friend drilling hole in pitch horn for control rod end attachment.

And for absolute seat-of-the-pants bare minimums you must have at least an engine temp. Like all homebuilders Ray Sebastian went through an education process in determining which instruments he should put in his Rotorway Exec helicopter and what the market had to offer.

Since budget considerations were as critical for Sebastian as most kit builders, whenever possible he went to the least expensive unit to get the job done—but quality and capability of the instrument were always the first priority. Following is a surprising list of just how much you can shoehorn into a homebuilt aircraft.

Installed engine, coupled to primary chain drive. RV 152 engine develops 152 hp. Note chain oil bath at top, reduction drive belts at center, engine block at bottom.

Obviously, individuals may make different choices as to what they feel is needed and what their friends recommend, but we thought you’d get a kick out of the diversity and breadth of equipment you can end up putting in your ship. The total accessories tab, including paint, was around $6,000.

We’ve included names and addresses for more information (1986):

• STS 7600 VOR handheld navcom radio, STS Loran C, contact: Satellite Technology Services, 2310-12 Millpark Dr., Maryland Heights, Mo. 63043, (314) 423-5560.

• FT 101 fuel totalizer, contact: Symbolic Displays Inc., 162 McGraw Ave., Irvine, Calif. 92713.

• Ball variometer, winter airspeed and altimeter, fuel sender, quartz clock, contact: Sky Sports, 2900 Kanuga, Hendersonville, N.C. 28739.

• Three-button pistol grips, toggle breakers and relays, post lights, contact: Flame Industries, 20945 Osbourne St., Canoga Park, Calif. 91304.

• Vertical card compass, contact: Hamilton Instruments, 106 Newhaus, Houston, Texas 77061.

• Manifold vacuum gauge, contact: Avion Instruments, 5710-12 Cahuenga Blvd., N. Hollywood, Calif. 91601.

• Position lights and strobe flasher, contact: Whelen, 3 Winter Ave., Deep River, Conn. 06417.

• Airman 750 headsets, TC 200 intercom, push-to-talk button, contact: Telex Communications, 9600 Aldrich Ave. S., Minneapolis, Minn. 55420.

• Exhaust temp and outside air temp gauges, LCD display, contact: Electronics Int., 5285 N.E. Young, #A100, Hillsboro, Ore. 97123.

• Antennas for navcom and Loran, contact: Antenna Dynamics Inc., 7349 Coldwater Canyon #2, N. Hollywood, Calif. 91605.

• Durethane aircraft paint, contact: PPG Industries, Ditzler Paint Division, 4473 Sheila St., Los Angeles, Calif. 90023.

• Ten-watt linear radio amplifier, contact: Communications Specialists, 426 W. Taft Ave., Orange, Calif. 92665-4296.

Building A Rotorway Exec Helicopter: Epilogue

Building a complex two-seat helicopter, even one as beautifully kitted up as the RotorWay Exec, is a labor of love, demanding a commitment of time, energy and patience. So when it came time for Exec homebuilder Ray Sebastian to take a break from the demands of the Kit Wars, it seems fitting that he chose to “relax” and have some fun by learning to hover a helicopter.

Before you nod your head in agreement, consider that flying a chopper is about as easy as juggling three live lobsters (with untaped pincers) while doing a tap dance, spinning a hula hoop and reciting the Rubiyat of Omar Khayam. . on a bolo board. Remember bolo boards?

Gary Wilson and friend Andy in Wilson ‘s Exec, performing hang test to check proper center of gravity placement with two people aboard. Test was also performed with only the pilot aboard.

But there is no hardier vision than the dream of the long-distance helicopter pilot-to-be, and so May 26 of this year found cadet Sebastian at the RotorWay Hover School in Arizona for the five days of rigorous hover training that are included in the price of the Exec kit.

Come with us now to those days of yester-month, as we follow our earnest cadet in his quest for the solo checkoff on his Class III medical certificate.

The first day is a blueprint for the entire five-day course. All four students turn in their medical certificates and pilot logbooks to the staff. An introductory video tape narrated by RotorWay President B.J. Schramm, explains the five-day course.

TOP: Ray Sebastian helps out In the final adjustments to Gary Wilson’s engine installation on his Exec helicopter.
LEFT: Center panel of cockpit from top to bottom: Electronics Int. twin EGT and OAT (exhaust gas temp and outside air temp gauges), has LCD readout; RotorWay fuel gauge; Stock Stewart-Warner oil pressure gauge; RotorWay oil temp gauge, RotorWay water temp gauge; Avion Instruments manifold vacuum gauge.
RIGHT: Right side panel. Symbolic Displays FT 101 fuel totalizer, left and memorial placard to flying buddy of Sebastian.

Two students each are then sent off with an instructor for the first flying session. Hover Man (aka Sebastian) finds himself sitting next to his tutor, a tall, lanky gentleman with the unlikely (but true) name of Stretch Wolter.

Wolter is the senior instructor at RotorWay with 10 years of experience under his belt. After showing the engine start and run-up procedures, Wolter turns to Hover Man and says levelly, “What I’m about to show you is all I will expect of you by the end of the week.”

He then adroitly lifts the Rotorway Exec helicopter into a delicate hover about 1 foot off the ground and smoothly moves the ship forward in a straight line to the next helipad about 50 feet away. He lowers it gently to the ground and turns to Hover Man. “Getting to that level of proficiency will take every bit of commitment from you over the next five days,” says Wolter.

LEFT: Chocolate or vanilla? Wilson’s blades, top, already have pitch horns installed. Sebastian’s at bottom have black retention straps that will attach to elastomeric rotor head with AN bolts.
RIGHT: Sebastian attaching the pitch horns to his blades.

Hover Man merely gulps, nods and smiles gamely. “Piece of cake,” he says affably, trying to remember the mantra he learned in yoga class—the one that allows you to tie your body into a pretzel without feeling pain. He has a suspicion he’s going to need it.

Next, Wolter lifts the ship 1 foot off the ground. “You start with the foot pedals. Maintain a straight heading forward, and I’ll take care of everything else.” The foot pedals control the left or right thrust of the tail rotor, and thus the yaw axis of flight.

Hover Man is initially a little hamhanded, as he finds himself overcorrecting left and right. The Rotorway Exec helicopter is wonderfully sensitive in yaw, great once the feel is acquired, frustrating until then. Hover Man learns to apply increments of input to the rudder bars very, very gingerly.

Tap dancing isn’t so tough after all. “I was relaxed,” he remembers, “because I had spent a lot of time predisposing myself to be relaxed, because your coordination is better if you’re relaxed.”

TOP LEFT: Looking aft from right side of Exec. Top scoop directs air to the engine cooling fan. Lower port is exhaust vent for engine compartment.
TOP CENTER: Tall boom, looking forward, showing top flasher strobe, rear position light.
TOP RIGHT: Finished Installation of navcom (upper) and Loran antenna (lower). Antennas are custom made by Antenna Dynamics of North Hollywood, Calif., and offer navcom range of well over 100 miles.
BOTTOM LEFT: Installation of STS Loran C is just in front of pilot’s cyclic stick.
BOTTOM CENTER: Just introduced at Oshkosh 86, the STS AV7600VOR navcom is builder Sebastian’s choice. Handheld , unit has 720 channels plus VOR, retails for less than $400. Note antenna coaxial cable at top of unit that connects to 10-watt linear amplifier, not shown. Amp boosts range to over 100 miles.
BOTTOM RIGHT: Cockpit interior. Left-side instruments, top row: RotorWay rotor tachometer and engine tach. Next row, left to right: Winter single-needle altimeter, Ball variometer (0-1500 fpm), Winter airspeed indicator. Bottom row, RotorWay Hobbs engine hour meter, quartz clock from Sky Sports.

After only half an hour, Hover Man climbs out for a welcome rest while his classmate climbs in. It is a company edict that hover students will fly no more than 1 hour per day total, in 30-minute bites.

Learning to fly a chopper is a “total mental immersion,” says Hover Man, and can be extremely exhausting at the end of an hour. RotorWay strongly urges its customer/builders to continue the same practice in their private hover training when they get back home; i.e., no more than 1 hour per day in 30-minute chunks.

“Otherwise,” cautions Hover Man, “you could have a total mental meltdown at an inopportune moment—like during hover. You might say the company motto is, ‘We will solo no pilot before his time.’“

Once they’ve learned to hover, students must accumulate at least another 35 hours of hover practice. Then they’re ready for phase two — airplane-type flying with climbouts, turns, banks and automations. Hover Man’s second half hour introduces the cyclic stick, which controls the roll and pitch axes of the ship by tilting the rotor disk.

Once he has a basic feel of the Rotorway Exec helicopters cyclic, Wolter has him resume control of the pedals as well. So now it’s the lobsters with the tap dancing. Hover Man is amazed at how much responsiveness the optional elastomeric hub gives to the control.

Movements of only 1/8th inch on the stick are all that is needed for movement in any horizontal direction. By the close of the second half hour, Wolter tosses in the hula hoop by giving control of the collective to Hover Man. The collective dials in pitch to the rotor blades.

LEFT: Ready and waiting for the maiden voyage. Telex Airman 750 headsets between seats are plugged into center-mounted TC 200 intercom, mounted just forward of center collective stick between seats.
RIGHT: Close-up of elastomeric rotorhead, optional from RotorWay, showing push-pull rods and bracket attachments. Note rotor tach sensor and cable, lower center Each stick has a three-button pistol grip from Flame Industries. Top button operates starter, trigger handles radio push-to-talk, third button on right side is pilot optional. Would you believe twin .50s?

Once Hover Man manages to stabilize everything, Wolter tells him to initiate forward movement by “just thinking” forward. “Reluctant believer that I was,” Hover Man recalls cheerily, “I found the ship actually responding as if to my thought.” Now Hover Man is in the thick of it. juggling, dancing, balancing.

As is typical for all new students. Wolter has to assist at the controls on several occasions. The day ends with Hover Man slightly humble but game as ever. “It’s a bit overwhelming at first. Don’t expect a lot of yourself the first day.”

With encouragement from Wolter that he is on par with the goal of the course, the weary cadet heads back to the classroom. There, a short critique of the flying is followed by a question/answer session. A discussion with the instructors on parts and components and a viewing of video tapes on construction procedures finishes off the day.

At the end of the five days, Hover Man straps in next to his instructor for the final goal flight of lift off, straight line hover to the next helipad and set down. Though he’s worked hard, his proficiency is not at the level he had hoped for, and he is concerned he might not receive his checkoff.

“It’s sort of like learning to drive stick in heavy traffic at age 15,” he says with chagrin, “on your first day of driver ed. . . with a gorgeous redhead watching you from the back seat. There’s just so much to deal with at one time.”

Nonetheless. Hover Man knows he’s made progress, and he tackles the task gallantly. After liftoff, he manages to complete the demanding 50-foot slide and get the Rotorway Exec helicopter back on the ground.

Though not picture perfect, it’s good enough for Wolter’s demanding requirements. Hover Man receives his solo checkoff. Ray Sebastian is a happy man. He knows he has the basic wits to hover a chopper and build up his skills on his own.

At times during the week, the lobsters pinched his nose or the hula hoop dropped to his ankles, and he wasn’t sure he’d be able to do it. But determination and RotorWay’s years of training experience has made the rigors of the course exactly what it takes to get a person, well, off the ground.

Next stop, the solo of his own Rotorway Exec helicopter. Then on to phase-two training, and the transmogrification of Ray Sebastian from Hover Man to Whirly Man, champion of truth, justice and the rotorcraft way!

The morning after the year before. Or, in builder Sebastian’s words, “The bird has flown the coop.”

The post Rotorway Exec Helicopter Build Part 7 appeared first on Redback Aviation.

Crash Testing The Helicycle Kit Helicopter

Flying into high-tension wires at 110 mph demands it!

ARTICLE DATE: March 1998

Pslams 34:7. “The Angel of the Lord encamps around about those who fear Him and delivers them.” This is not a story that I was one day hoping to write, nor can I take any credit for its outcome. I wish someone had gotten this on video, because I’d like to have seen it from a distance myself.

The events happened so quickly—and with virtually no injuries—that it’s difficult to believe it happened to me at all. I traveled to Big Timber, Montana the first week of December to demonstrate the Helicycle compound helicopter for some potential investors.

The location was un-congested and the weather was partially overcast and cold. I had surveyed the area and pre-flown a routine the night before. There were high tension wires nearby, and I planned my demonstration to stay clear of them.

B.J. Schramm’s single-seat Helicycle uses pusher propeller power for higher speed and efficiency in forward flight.

The following day I had a safety briefing The with the observers before takeoff and at proceeded to warm up the Helicycle helicopter. The engine did not come up to temperature so I sat in a hover and kind of fumed over this dilemma.

The temperature finally came up a bit and I began my routine. The moment came for the high-speed pass. As I began my parabolic descent and acceleration to 110 mph, I picked out a previously chosen power pole and what I thought was the correct trajectory.

The engine was not sounding right, and as I accelerated I was distracted. I failed to realize that I was going to pull out far too low and also that I was rapidly converging on the very power lines I had previously determined to avoid.

In a heartbeat, black streaks appeared in the center of my windscreen. I was now at my maximum velocity and could not change trajectory. I had no thought of surviving, but I still rolled hard left, hoping that it might help somehow. The ship impacted the wires, sort of slid down them and cut through three of them.

One of the wires wound around the main shaft and destroyed the pitch links. As the ship dropped to the ground, (still traveling at 70-80 mph), the vertical position of the blades (still rotating quite rapidly) caused them to dissipate both vertical and horizontal momentum.

The cabin then impacted extremely hard on the left skid. The ship then rebounded over on the right skid, smashing it flat also. A second rebound Hung the cabin back on its left side, and I watched the world spin around as the snow and dirt flew into my face from just inches away.

After what seemed like 200 yards (actually it was only about 120 feet), everything came to a stop. Fuel was leaking out of the filler neck and it sure seemed prudent to depart. I unbuckled the seat belt and shoulder harness that had held me firmly inside the cockpit, stood up and walked away.

B.J. SCHRAMM can be considered the father of successful amateur-built helicopters; his Scorpion-series kits in the 1970s led to his RotorWay Exec design. The single-seat Helicycle is his current interest.

Hardly believing that I was alive, I noticed the dead power line all wrapped around the ship. Bystanders later told me the other two lines were sizzling and snapping in the snow. The rescue people were there instantly and made me lie down. They were sure I had major trauma and rushed me to the hospital.

I kept telling them I was okay except for a cut on my head. (The cut didn’t require stitches.) The sheriff brought my glasses (intact), and the FAA inspected my paperwork, pronounced it in compliance, and encouraged me to rebuild and get back in the air.

I believe the bottom line to the story is this: Many years ago I asked God not to let me die in one of my own designs. This prayer has been granted several times during my career, but never so spectacularly as it was on the afternoon of December 5, 1997, in Big Timber, Montana.

NOTE: B.J. Schramm later died in another Helicycle helicopter crash – speculated to be caused by a “medical situation.” The Helicycle did not exhibit any form of failure.

The post B.J. Schramm Crash Tests Single Seat Helicopter appeared first on Redback Aviation.

Two Seat Kit Built Scorpion Helicopter

ARTICLE DATE: October 1979

FOR THE PRICE of a 10-year-old Cessna Skyhawk, how would you like to own an ultra-sharp, brand-new, go-anywhere, homebuilt, two-place Scorpion 133 helicopter, with a complete flight-training program leading to an FAA Private Rotorcraft Rating?

A custom-built beauty you can operate from your own backyard, one you assemble yourself and do all maintenance work on, to keep the cost down? A chopper you can fly for $6 45 an hour direct operating cost, about half that of a comparable commercial whirlybird?

We’re talking about B J Schramm’s latest model Scorpion 133, an ultimate transportation/recreational vehicle for the homebuilder who thought he had everything. It comes as a package deal that includes a $10 information kit for starters, then a $95 Helicopter Owner’s Indoctrination Course, complete with tape cassettes and color slides.

Then, once you’re satisfied that you want to be a rotorwing jock, you’ll receive complete construction packages, a new 133-hp RW-133 liquid-cooled powerplant and a complete training program that covers flight training, operation and theory, and maintenance ground school.

With all this and fun, too, Schramm seems to have made the most sensible approach to the wonderful world of rotorcraft building, flying, and ownership with the Scorpion 133 helicopter.

It should satisfy the need of the amateur constructor whose past experience has been limited to stiff-wingers, or maybe balloons. The Scorpion 133 helicopter is an evolutionary, not a revolutionary, whirlybird whose roots go deep.

Thirteen years ago, in 1966, B.J., a 28-year-old helicopter design engineer, introduced the Scorpion’s grandpa, an open-cockpit single-seat rotorcraft called the javelin; the next year he brought out a kit version, the Scorpion, named for one of those nasty, mean, ugly, little desert critters that have a tail stinger somewhat resembling the tail rotor assembly of a helicopter.

Whereas the desert scorpion is a loner and will try to kill and eat any other scorpion around, including her lover (the female is the dangerous one, remember?), B.J.’s Scorpion was a downright friendly machine, an open-framework aircraft for hover-lovers, though not much protection from the wind.

In 1970, when a two-cycle powerplant of 125 hp became available, the single-seater became a two-place Scorpion Too, with a gross weight of 1125 pounds Soon other aerodynamic and mechanical improvements were added to make Scorpion Too a practical, light utility rotorcraft.

One thing bothered B J… He had in mind a four-cycle reliable powerplant of the aircraft type, but none was available with enough power to haul two people in a machine with an empty weight just under 700 pounds, so he set out to design and build one himself.

From a concept in 1975, the RW-133 aircraft engine became a reality in two years and is now available for delivery.

The RW-133 looks a little like a VW engine, but has a water-cooled crankcase and cylinder heads, weighs 170 pounds dry, has a 133 cu in displacement (CID) and puts out the same horsepower at 4500 crankshaft rpm, with a specific fuel consumption of 4 pounds per horsepower per hour.

The RW-133 turned out so well in fact, that BJ modified it to deliver 100 hp at around 3500 rpm direct drive, to help fill the need for a good, low-cost ($3,600) engine for builders of conventional aircraft. At Oshkosh this summer, both were demonstrated.

By late 1976 B.J.’s company. RotorWay Aircraft Inc., of Tempe. Arizona, had renamed the Scorpion Too whirlybird Scorpion 133 in honor of its new engine. It also featured a new, asymmetrical airfoil rotor system to improve its efficiency.

In addition, a new marketing program was adopted, and today Scorpion 133 helicopter is available only as a construction package, direct from the factory, no middleman, although overseas distributors are available if you live outside the United States.

The RotorWay approach to helicopter design stresses a low initial cost of around $11 per pound compared with $50 per pound for the average turbine helicopter airframe Schramm has described the design of a helicopter as “essentially a series of vibrations, all of which are being made to function in harmony with one another.”

“Three major flywheel effects are present — the rotor-blade system, the tail-rotor system and the powerplant system. All must operate in perfect harmony to achieve smooth flight.”

New two-place Scorpion 133 homebuilt helicopter can be flown for only $6.45 per hour direct operating cost.

B J had to choose among three classic rotor-hub configurations for the Scorpion: the teetering or semirigid hub, the fully articulated hub and the completely rigid hub. He chose the first as best suited to the novice flyer, with a more rigid set of safety standards as well as the most economical configuration.

In a semirigid hub, he explains, the collective control changes the blade pitch relative to the hub. Cyclic pitch or directional control is achieved by tilting the rotor hub with respect to the main drive shaft.

In the Scorpion, cyclic and collective controls, rather than being mixed, are kept separate and distinct by tilting the hub only with the cyclic control and using a flexible push-pull cable for separate collective control.

This patented system was a sort of mechanical breakthrough. Equally important is the design of the Scorpion’s two rotor blades, built to withstand three kinds of forces:

• A centrifugal force, due to tip speed and blade weight, of nearly 8000 pounds. This tremendous stress is transferred from blade to rotor hub with a series of fiberglass doublers

• A torsional load of some 600 pounds applied to the main shaft, producing pitch instability in a blade without sufficient stiffness

• Control forces, which must be identical to each blade when a movement of the cyclic control is made, to avoid severe cyclic stick feedback due to out-of-track operation.

The Scorpion 133 helicopter rotor system is designed to handle all these forces well, including a patented rotor blade using a D-section steel leading edge interlocked with a V-section aluminum trailing edge, bonded and screwed to a birch main spar, tough enough to behead a duck.

The Scorpion rotor system turns counter-clockwise, with the primary drive using belts for power-pulse damping. A series of three drive belts runs back to the tail rotor.

In operation, the Scorpion 133 helicopter pilot uses a twist-grip throttle to add or subtract power automatically as the collective pitch stick is moved, adding or subtracting pitch equally from each rotor blade for climbs and descents.

Directional movement is maintained with the cyclic control stick, which tilts the rotor disc in the direction the pilot wants to go, accelerating in proportion to the degree of tilt. Single or dual controls may be used.

The cabin enclosure is a streamlined fiberglass unit providing maximum visibility through a large windscreen, and is easily removable in a matter of minutes for repair. Its pretty shape is more than aesthetic — it actually adds miles per hour and improves flight stability due to its design.

Unique is RotorWay’s “Scorpion Sky Center” flight training facility, where you start off by attending an introductory seminar to learn what you’re getting into. Next comes a preconstruction ground school course, the first of a two-part assembly training program.

Flight training is covered in three phases, with considerable coordinated ground study using videotape presentations. You begin by studying FAR Parts 61 and 91, and then get the second half of your construction lessons.

Following 20 hours (or less) of hover flying near the ground, you start learning translational flight up through 45 mph speeds, and get signed off for solo flight over one of the local hover pads.

You can also take your toy home then, wind it up and play in your own backyard if you like, or stick around the Salt River Valley country (the local Chamber of Commerce now refers to it as the Valley of the Sun), and learn all about full climbout and approach techniques and autorotations.

After that you’re ready for a flight check, hopefully to win your FAA Private Rotorcraft rating. To take an a typical case, let’s look in on Malcolm K (Mike) Carpenter of Anderson, Indiana, who read about the Scorpion 133 helicopter and fell in love with it back in 1971.

New Blood For The Scorpion 133 Helicopter

A buddy, Jack True, fell in love with the same beauty, and rather than create a triangular scene, they both bought kits. Both were top metal-workers, and things shaped up beautifully. In addition, Mike went the custom route and added a bigger instrument console and a completely enclosed cabin upholstered in red and black velvet — would you believe?

He also installed an alternator, two quartz landing lights, a 12.5-gallon fuel tank and a chrome-plated heat shield under the engine, so he can see its reflection. He had to make some changes to install the new RW-133 engine, and finally last summer towed the whirlybird to Oshkosh where it easily won the top Grand Champion Rotorcraft Award from the EAA.

LEFT: Instrument console of Mike Carpenters prize-winning Scorpion homebuilt helicopter is covered with black velour “fur.”
RIGHT: Scorpion helicopter rotor system is teetering, semirigid type, flexible push-pull cable provides separate collective control.

Named Lil’ Susie for his patient wife, much of its attractiveness comes from a fantastic paint job of DuPont Centari enamel. The Scorpion 133 helicopter instrument panel, Mike designed is covered with black velour and is easily removable for servicing the gauges.

The dials in Mike’s bird include fuel gauge, rotor RPM, engine RPM, oil pressure, oil temperature, manifold pressure, engine-hours meter, altimeter, airspeed indicator, G-meter, clock, water temperature gauge and volt/ammeter.

There are also master and magneto switches, push-buttons for a strobe and two quartz landing lights, and beneath the panel a hot-water heater for winter flying. The alternator keeps the battery up; it’s almost a necessity, Mike says, as the battery won’t stand many start-ups without an APU.

There’s much chrome-plating on Mike’s Lil’ Susie, and the aluminum of the rotor hub, swash plate and tail rotor assemblies were spectacularly hand-polished. It was so pretty that Mike towed her down to Rockford for the International Popular Rotorcraft Association meet and won more prizes:

• Best Customized Helicopter,

• Best Detailed Workmanship,

• Best Paint job and

• Best Static Display.

That was all nice — but would it fly??? Last October Mike got it off the ground and went ground skimming. He recalls: “It gave me a great feeling at this point, and even at this very small altitude I knew my creation could leave the earth in the manner in which it was intended.”

Lousy weather moved in before Mike could complete his flight training and get into translational flight, but by now he’s well on his way as one of several hundred Scorpion pilots. (B.J. won’t say just how many, for proprietory reasons)

Early single-place Scorpion hovers over Moiave Desert as homebuilder gets in some rotorcraft practice.

For all the nice things you can say about the Scorpion 133 helicopter, it has not been entirely immune from accidents. In 1976, the NTSB reported four Scorpion accidents, including two fatals.

Last year the EAA reported five Scorpion mishaps, three resulting in minor injuries, the other two more serious. One of the latter, in fact, involved B.J. Schramm himself, who suffered a couple of broken ribs in a hard landing after his engine lost power.

His passenger was unhurt, and we are glad to report that B.J. is up and about again. And last March a Scorpion pilot in South Carolina was killed when his machine “just fell and crashed,” according to the EAA.

While RotorWay no longer sells plans for the Scorpion 133 helicopter, for $13,500 you get complete helicopter construction packages, one RW-133 four-cylinder water-cooled engine and a complete training program including flight training, operation and theory, and maintenance ground school.

The post Rotorway Scorpion 133 Helicopter Kit appeared first on Redback Aviation.

Rotorway Exec Helicopter Advertising

ARTICLE DATE: April 1985

AFFORDABLE ROTARY WING FLYING

SEE IT AT HOME… AND BELIEVE IT… THE THRILL IS BACK!!

The RotorWay Exec is an unbelievable innovation in personal transportation! After all, who would believe this helicopter costs less than a luxury sports car?

That its main rotor hub utilizes state-of-the-art elastomeric bearing technology found in helicopters costing $150,000 and up, or that when it comes to performance, safety and styling it meets or beats anything in its class, or that its four cylinder water cooled 152 H.P. power plant runs on auto fuel, not expensive AVgas!??

Can you believe all this?

YOU WILL!!!… Once you see it on video!

SEEING IS BELIEVING

As the old saying goes, seeing is believing and not only will you see first hand the evolution of helicopters in general and the evolution of the Exec in particular. but you’ll also take a heart pounding ride with our pilot through picture postcard deserts and majestic snow covered mountain peaks.

Then it’s on to breathtaking Lake Powell where sculptured red rock towers rise hundreds of feet from the waters edge providing awesome views of the pristine blue water beaches below. Then, with tranquility behind us it’s time for more action packed high speed flying. You won’t believe what this ship can do… until you see it!

UTILITY WITH EXCITEMENT

You’ll see that fun isn’t the only thing the Exec has to offer. Agricultural spray equipment and water floats add utility to the long list of uses this personal helicopter has to offer.

If you’ve ordered one of our information packets in the past you’ll definitely want this video, and our updated information package. You won’t believe what the Scorpion and Exec have evolved into… until you see it!

COST EFFECTIVE OPERATION

Something you CAN believe however, is the fact that the low end of general aviation is dying, if not already dead. FACT! Sales of 2 and 4 place fixed wing aircraft are currently 20% of what they were 10 years ago! Why? Most industry experts say skyrocketing costs are to blame.

That’s hog wash! When you allow for inflation over the past 10 years, the cost really hasn’t increased all that much. So, what’s the reason? Lack of new designs is one thing, but even more so is the fact that entry level fixed wing aircraft don’t offer much excitement or utility.

Think about it. Is it cost effective to fly the company airplane 200 miles9 Not very, and distances longer than that are best traveled on commercial flights. This is especially true now with airline deregulation.

Plus the fact that you still need ground transportation going to and from the airport. In case you haven’t realized it… it’s time for a change. It’s time for the helicopter. You’re ready for excitement and we’ve got it…THE THRILL IS BACK!!!

Point to point NOT airport to airport is the most-efficient way to fly within a 200 mile radius. The Exec totally fulfills the urgent demand for this type of essential transportation.

HELICOPTER VS. SMALL AIRPLANE

Some people will tell you general aviation hasn’t changed in forty years. The truth is they just haven’t been looking in the right direction. Helicopters WILL replace the small airplane! We’ve made this tape to prove it to you, so prepare yourself for some shocking reality! On top of all this, it isn’t necessary to be IFR rated to fly a helicopter.

If weather moves in and you’re halfway to your destination just land where you run out of sky and safely wait it out. With as little as 2 or 3 acres of land you can park it at your home or office. (Depending on local housing density.)

For you video buffs, this production utilizes the latest in Digital Video Effects and state-of-the-art Ampex Digital Optics combined with an incredibly dynamic soundtrack! The days of two dimensional travel are over. You can live in a whole new world of affordable three dimensional point to point transportation!

See it…then believe it! THE THRILL IS BACK!!!

SPRAY EQUIPMENT OPTION FOR ROTORWAY HELICOPTERS

In an effort to add more versatility and increase the cost-effectiveness of its helicopters. RotorWay Aircraft has completed testing of a new agriculture spraying system. Now available as an option for the Exec model, this unique sprayer will provide the farmer or rancher with expanded use of his personal helicopter.

Dual 10-gallon capacity tanks, mounted aft of the cockpit on both sides of the ship, along with a 12-volt pumping system, provide the Exec with 160 acres of coverage at one pint per acre with a swatch of 35 feet.

A maximum load of 20 gallons will cover 160 acres in 01:20:00 at 30 mph. This ultra low-volume system is ideal for the small or mid-size farm or ranch operation.

Traditional spraying methods cost a minimum of $3 to $5 per acre of application. The Exec’s spray system retails in the neighborhood of $3,450, so it could easily pay for itself in one season.

The spray system is designed to be easily installed or removed from the helicopter in just a few minutes. With the system removed, an operator can check irrigation canals, fences, livestock, crop conditions and, of course, his favorite fishing hole!

The post Early Rotorway Exec Advertising appeared first on Redback Aviation.

Rotorway Exec Helicopter A Legacy To B.J. Schramm

RotorWay’s sleek helicopter is easier to build, swifter in flight and looks as good as a factory-built ship

ARTICLE DATE: November-December 1984

Rotorway Exec, the build-and-fly-it-your-self helicopter manufacturer in Chandler, Arizona, is one of those places where progress and improvement are constant; get out of touch for a few months and the company has a new program, an improvement on its product or a changed marketing plan.

However, change is never made merely for the sake of change; the new product or plan has to be demonstrably better than what it replaces. The two big items currently at RotorWay are its Exec-model helicopter and its expanded training program that culminates in a Private Pilot—Helicopter rating.

It now is possible to build your own helicopter and get a rating to fly it, all for the same price. RotorWay still offers its Scorpion 133 helicopter at a lower price than the new Exec, and either may be used in the build-and-learn program.

The Exec is a slick, all-enclosed, two-seat helicopter with excellent performance for its weight and power. A bubble-like enclosure gives it the appearance of a larger, turbine-powered, factory-built ship. And, its design, fit and finish carry out that theme; its a professional-looking machine.

Its generically related to the Scorpion, but it is a totally new helicopter. We first saw the Exec at the HAI (Helicopter Association International) convention and product show, where it looked right at home among the Bell JetRangers, Hughes 500s and Sikorsky.

The Exec drew lots of lookers at the fle rotor-flyers convention, but not many buyers; most of these people already had ratings and were flying the bigger ships commercially. Later that year, at the EAA convention at Oshkosh, the fans lined up 10-deep around the Exec display and packed all of President B.J. Schramm’s lectures on the subject.

A lot of newer ideas went into the design of the Exec, as well as at least one complete revision. According to Schramm, the first prototype of the new design didn’t fly well at all. and no matter what they did, it didn’t improve much.

So, it was back to the drawing board for the whole fiberglass fuselage design, and the second time around it came out right; it flew fast and straight, and was easier to handle than the Scorpion.

Like the Scorpion helicopter, the Exec has a welded, steel-tube framework that extends from the skids up to the rotor mount. It also extends from the front of the cockpit aft to the engine mount, but from there on it differs….the Scorpion has a welded-up tailboom where the Exec helicopter has a monocoque aluminum tube.

Both utilize a fiberglass shell over the frame to form a cockpit cover, but the Execs is far more extensive and streamlined. It completely covers the engine and an extra “doghouse” section atop the fuselage covers much of the drivetrain, as well.

BOTTOM LEFT: Freeway flying at 250 feet and 75 mph . . . B.J. Schramm shows the Exec’s surveillance mode and a terrific view.
RIGHT: Cyclic links attach to the rotor hub rather than to the individual blade pitch horns, thus eliminating need for a vertically – movable swash plate.

Thus the Rotorway Exec is much sleeker and aerodynamically slicker than its predecessor. When Schramm designed the pop-riveted tailboom, he also redesigned the tail rotor drive-adjustment system.

Where the Scorpion requires individual tensioning of the tail rotor drivebelts (there are three), working from the engine out, the Execs drive system can be tensioned all at once by adjusting two bolts exposed when the small tailcone is removed.

New fuel tanks are rotationally-molded, cross-linked polyurethane plastic, and strong enough to resist 15G impacts. They also are form fitted to get maximum capacity in a cramped space, each tank holding 7.5 gallons. Schramm likes to demonstrate the tanks’ toughness by beating on them with a claw hammer.

An ultra-simple cyclic control system was developed for the Rotorway Exec and it eliminates bellcranks and control rods by using dual push-pull cables. This makes rigging much easier and provides a dual load path for safety.

The RotorWay design uses cyclic inputs to control the swash plate, which in turn controls the angle of the rotor head relative to the attitude of the helicopter. This eliminates some expensive and sophisticated designs used on other helicopters, though it shortens the e.g. range of the ship.

RotorWay uses the ships battery as movable ballast; it’s located in the tailboom when two people are aboard, but must be relocated to a compartment in the nose when the pilot. The Exec’s rotor shaft is driven by multiple rubber belts from a reduction “bull wheel;” the engine drives the belt wheel through a duplex chain.

While it may be a little less sophisticated than a current production helicopter, it nonetheless eliminates expensive transmissions, gears, shafts, etc., which would be too cosdy for the homebuilder. The Rotorway Exec system is reliable and durable, and includes a belt-tensioning device to act as a rotor-engagement clutch.

Like other parts of the Exec, the engine is unique to RotorWay. In fact, it is RotorWay’s own design and construction and is the only liquid-cooled aircraft engine in the air today (excepting the V12 Allison and Merlin engines in restored warbirds).

This four-cylinder, opposed engine follows the same basic layout as a Volkswagen automobile engine, from which it originally sprang, but it has been completely redesigned and is now produced in RotorWays own foundries.

It operates in a vertical position (crankshaft parallel to the rotor shaft) and has a dry-sump lubrication system. A husky 145-cubic-inch engine, it produced 145 horsepower at 4500 rpm, burning approximately 8.5 gallons per hour.

What’s more, complete with dual radiators and water pump, it weighs about the same as an 0-320 Lycoming of equal output. The engines are cast, machined, assembled and dynomometer-tested in RotorWay’s extensive facilities, prior to being shipped to its helicopter customers.

A similar engine, lowered to 100 hp and redesigned to operate horizontally, was marketed briefly to fixed-wing aircraft builders, but met with considerable resistance; despite comparable prices, the builders opted for less-efficient, aircooled engines.

The engine is quieter than most, probably because of excellent muffling (and a tuned-length, scavenging exhaust header system) and the water jackets. In fact, the whole Exec is quieter than any other small helicopter we’ve heard.

At 450 rpm, the rotor blades do not seem to be creating that thrashing noise usually associated with helicopters, and at full speed, the tail rotor also is unobtrusive: it’s one of the few “good neighbor” helicopters.

The rotor blades are a new design as well, being asymmetrical in airfoil shape where the previous blades were symmetrical. These new blades are bonded as well as riveted and arrive at the builder’s shop almost ready to install.

He must fit in some wooden filler blocks before they are completed and mounted on the rotor hub. The new rotors give the Exec an improved rate of climb as well as slower descent during autorotations …about the equivalent of adding 15 hp to the Rotorway Exec engine’s output, the RotorWay president declared.

Schramm offered a training session in the demonstrator Exec, and we leaped at the chance. But, without comparable experience in other helicopters, we cannot draw comparisons.

RotorWay students usually begin with hours of hovering practice to learn basic control coordination, but we did ours in the air. After about an hour, we got so we could hold it more-or-less straight and level, and could make a turn or two.

Back at the hover pads, we chased the ship all around the area before we nearly got it under consistent control, but by then our learning process has been slowed to a standstill by the fatigue of concentration.

In short, we can say that it seemed easy enough to learn the Rotorway Exec control, with proper instruction and enough practice. And it proved to be enjoyable enough that we’d like to pursue a helicopter rating sometime.

A RotorWay Exec would seem to provide the ideal program for the person who wants to bake his cake and eat it, too. We had trouble at first finding what Schramm calls the “pressure point,” where you can hold the Exec in perfect balance between lift, gravity, thrust and drag.

This takes just the slightest pressure and seems almost more to be sensed than felt. Movements of the cyclic control also must be sensed rather than consciously moved, and it takes a while before a pilot develops a properly conditioned response.

“Because we fly the hub rather than the blade on the Rotorway Exec, it takes less control power fore and aft than laterally. You don’t have to move the stick as far laterally as you do fore and aft to get the same response, and that’s why you can’t catch it at first, until you learn the right ‘mix’ of forces on the cyclic,” Schramm explained. “Once you get the feel of it, you can fly the ship successfully.”

If a pilot already has a helicopter rating, then the RotorWay instructors go over the stick force differentials before they fly; if a pilot is new to helicopters, then the instructors let the pilot “feel” his way to the correct pressures before they explain it all.

“It allows us to completely separate the cyclic and collective controls in the teaching process,” Schramm commented. “Our hub design lets us do that without much penalty, and we’ve been able to make a safer system for the amateur-built helicopter”.

“Once you’ve learned to hold an attitude, the turns become an easy thing to do. It’s just a matter of learning to hold what position you like for the climbing or descending turn, and positioning the stick for that attitude and leaving it alone. We do it with a constant manifold pressure setting, 25.5-26 inches if we want to climb, 24 inches if we want to descend.”

“You have to be able to feel the pendulum swing . . . the attitude change . . . and then return to the pressure point before you can maintain straight-and-level flight,” Schramm explained.

Normally, the student learns his attitude control at hover height, where ground references provide strong visual cues, and once he’s mastered that, he graduates into climbout and cruise modes. Hover training takes the first one-week session at RotorWay’s Sky Center, climbout and cruise another week-long training visit.

If the pilot wants to gain an FAA helicopter rating (which he must have if he expects to carry a passenger with him on any flights), then he must return to the Sky Center for a third week of training that prepares him for the rating checkflight.

Stretch Wolters, RotorWay’s chief flight instructor, is the FAA-designated examiner. The five-day learning weeks at RotorWay are utilized for much more than teaching the Exec or Scorpion builder how to fly a helicopter.

Most of the time spent there is taken up in classroom sessions where audio-visual presentations and hands-on instruction teach him the correct way to rig, tune and maintain his own ship. He also learns helicopter theory and flight fundamentals.

When the builder is finished with the first week’s session, he’s ready to return to his home base and practice hovering. Later, he goes back to Chandler for a second session, where he picks up more flight, more theory and more maintenance training.

RotorWay’s component package shipping is keyed to the training program, too. The builder receives his ship in “groups” that give him the correct construction sequence.

They are:

Rotorway Exec Group I

Special tool kit, tailboom, airframe, landing gear, fiberglass body and windshield windscreen, seats, floorpan and doors—the outer shell of the helicopter.

Rotorway Exec Group II

Engine mount, cyclic control, collective and directional controls, tail rotor and drive.

Rotorway Exec Group III

Lower collective, secondary drive, oil bath.

Rotorway Exec Group IV

Fuel system, rotor tachometer, clutch torque, oil cooling system, water pump, radiator, fan shroud, fan drive, standpipe and hoses, instrument panel and wiring harness, engine instruments.

Rotorway Exec Group V

Rotor hub, rotor blades, swash plate. Group VI -RW-145 engine, battery.

Current list price for all the groups is $25,874, though each group may be purchased separately. And, there are crating charges and optional equipment, plus freight, so a builder could figure on nearly $27,000 for his project.

Comparing an Exec with a new or used lightweight factory-built helicopter, plus training, shows a good deal higher outlay. A well-thrashed Bell 47 goes for $30,000 + , and it probably will have high-time components needing imminent, expensive replacement.

And, you’ll need a licensed A&P to do the work (an Exec or Scorpion builder can do his own maintenance). Flight training easily can add another $3000-$4000 to the cost, too. New light helicopters start at the $83,100 list price for a Robinson R22: a Hughes 300 or Enstrom Shark tops $135,000 retail.

Thus the RotorWay program offers good value to the pilot ready and capable of doing his own construction. In return he gets a good-looking, good-performing helicopter with which he can have lots of fun, a helicopter rating, and that great, priceless pleasure of flying something he’s built with his own hands.

The post Flying The Rotorway Exec RW145 appeared first on Redback Aviation.

Single Seat Kit Built Helicopter Prototype

ARTICLE DATE: August 1966

Schramm’s Sleek Single-Seater Javelin Helicopter …a Cutie Copter

Single-seater has cyclic stick, pedals for tail rotor control and collective stick left of seat. Gauges are altimeter, temperature and rpm. Skin comes off in 4 min.

Buford J. Schramm of South San Gabriel, Calif., expects to market this single-seater “advance-design” Javelin helicopter after certification in 1968 at the low price of $8,000 to $10,000.

Schramm, the 27-year-old designer, claims the price is possible because his “Javelin” uses less than half the parts found in other helicopters. His “Tractable Control Rotor”, for which patents are pending, has but a half dozen parts plus a few bearings.

Nuts-and-Bolts Dept: (A) Mercury outboard powerplant (B) Swashplate (C) Chain and sprocket drive (D) V-belt and reduction (E) Tail rotor boom (F) Tail rotor drive (H) Radiator (J) Main rotor shaft (K) Walking beam (L) Straps holding blades (M) Collective control cable.

Rotor blades are laminated; Schramm does not divulge the materials. Airframe is of chromemoly tubing, tail boom is aluminum tube. The prototype has aluminum skins on the cockpit; production versions will have fiberglass covering.

The present aluminum body can be stripped from the airframe in less than 4 minutes, the entire helicopter disassembled in less than 90 minutes. Another feature of Javelin is its take-it-home capabilities for garaging.

To date, some $90,000 to $100,000 has been expended on its development. Schramm expects to have 21 ships in the hands of dealers by the end of the first year following certification, hopes to produce a-ship-per-day during his second year.

“Javelin” Helicopter Specifications & Performance:

LEFT: Trailer (below, in background) permits garage storage.
RIGHT: Prototype employs outboard engine for powerplant, radiator for water cooling, latter located aft of cockpit under tail boom.

Javelin Helicopter Main Rotor

• Main rotor diameter 21.4-ft;

• Main rotor blade cord 7.25-in;

• Main rotor airfoil NACA 0015;

• Main rotor area 14-sq ft.

Javelin Helicopter Tail Rotor

• Tail rotor diameter 3.7-ft; blade rpm 2500;

• airfoil NACA 0015.

Javelin Helicopter General Specifications

• Empty weight 500-lbs;

• gross 880-lbs;

• fuel capacity 12-gals.

• Disc loading 2.3-lb/sq ft;

• power loading 8.8-lbs/hp;

engine 100-hp Continental 0-200 (prototype is fitted with a 100-hp Outboard Marine “Mercury”).

Javelin Helicopter Performance

• Max speed 85-mph;

• endurance 2.25-hrs;

• hover ceiling 5,000-ft in ground effect, out of ground effect 3,500-ft;

• rate of climb 1200-ft/min;

• auto-rotation rate of descent 1250-ft/min;

• service ceiling 11,500-ft.

Nuts-and-Bolts Dept: (A) Mercury outboard powerplant (B) Swashplate (C) Chain and sprocket drive (D) V-belt and reduction (E) Tail rotor boom (F) Tail rotor drive (H) Radiator (J) Main rotor shaft (K) Walking beam (L) Straps holding blades (M) Collective control cable.

The post B.J. Schramm’s Sleek Single Seat Javelin Helicopter appeared first on Redback Aviation.

BJ Schramm Rotorway Exec Helicopter Kit

B.J. SCHRAMM IS ON A ONE-MAN CRUSADE TO MAKE HIS HELICOPTERS AVAILABLE TO THE FLYING PUBLIC

ARTICLE DATE: August 1984

“Ultimately the only helicopter that will exist will be the personal helicopter,” said B. J. Schramm, conceiver, designer and manufacturer of the RotorWay homebuilt series of helicopters. He feels that the tilt rotor is the next generation rotorcraft and will eventually dominate the commercial world, leaving the conventional whirlybird solely for personal use.

This was a strong prediction from a man driven to the task of bringing the world a personally affordable helicopter. And, in part, B. J. Schramm has indeed fulfilled his mission. The RotorWay Exec can be yours for a mere $26,000 . . . that is, of course, as long as you’re willing to spend the time to put it together yourself.

Sleek lines of the Exec are displayed at the RotorWay Arizona facility. This helicopter had the sleek and appealing looks from day one. Of course this didn’t hurt its aerodynamics with a notable high speed cruise.

The next closest entry in the private helicopter competition, however, is a factory-built machine which currently tips the scales near $80,000. In comparison, the RotorWay Exec helicopter is a dream, for many, come true.

Interestingly, Schramm claims that most of his homebuilders have had little prior experience in aviation, I underlining the fact that he isn’t selling to A&P mechanics but to average citizens with a yearning for whirlybirds.

He indicated that although some are fixed-wing pilots, most have had no previous aviation, let alone helicopter, background. The story began in 1958. Schramm had always been interested in helicopters but never learned to fly.

“I wanted to go into the helicopter field but felt God wanted me to preach,” he continued blithely. “When it came time to make a decision, God said ‘Build helicopters.”

There were no tablets, no burning bushes, just B. J. and a dream. It took ten years for the neophyte ereator to make a practical flying machine. Apparently he crashed four of his designs before someone convinced Schramm to take lessons and learn how to fly.

If nothing more, the man exhibits both a motivation and a dedication to his calling. Schramm had turned down opportunities to work with established helicopter manufacturers and decided to forge his own way.

The one man behind the internatinal success of the “Kit Built Helicopter” – Buford John Schramm – AKA – B.J. Schramm (RIP). By leaving the Exec for the builder to complete, Schramm has avoided passing on the costs of certification.

Interestingly, he claims to have no intensely formal engineering or aeronautical background. Having attended a small college in Pasadena, California, Schramm studied for another two years at Cal Poly, Burt Rutan’s alma mater. “I had two years of aeronautical courses but nothing to do with helicopters.” He also had no flight experience.

“I taught myself to fly on El Mirage Dry Lake.” He later taught himself everything else. Although the actual helicopter project began in 1958, the final decision to launch was made in late 1963.

“I proceeded slowly — there were problems in learning to fly a machine I was trying to learn to build,” he continued. “An inner force told me to go on — I knew I had been granted this opportunity.” Apparently some miraculous escapes attest to God’s will as far as Schramm is concerned. “The first ship wasn’t really flyable.”

By 1967, the embryonic company had a workable machine but sold plans only. The name Scorpion was selected—an appropriate appellation for a machine born in the Arizona desert that could kill you as quickly as its namesake if you hadn’t offered the proper respect.

The following year RotorWay was producing a kit helicopter, a unique offering different from the Benson Gyrocopter. Benson, brilliant designer that he is, couldn’t get his marketing quite right.

B.J. Schramm in his prime: Schramm’s foundry supplies many of the custom parts for the Exec series of helicopters.

The gyrocopter was effectively a formidable competitive element for Schramm but a wave of accidents, largely due to lack of training rather than product flaws, swept Benson’s company away in the tide.

Schramm persisted. It was an undertaking not to be criticized. Where numerous, so-called “professionals” have come and gone in aviation, Schramm, fifteen years later, holds on tenaciously. He produces an attractive machine and still exerts a presence, if not a market domination.

Whatever you can say about his helicopter, and it does appear to be a fine machine, B. J. Schramm is an astute businessman. All too often in aviation one finds the romantics — those so enamored by their concept that they fail to see the economic ramifications which eventually send them down the tubes.

Schramm, on the other hand, has cleverly supported his vision with good economic sense. He does, however, play his cards extremely close. How many kits have been sold?

“It’s hard to tell because the aircraft is composed of several kits,” he replied. “Many start and never finish so it would be difficult to say how many complete airplanes are out there.” Well how many starter kits have been sold? The reply was equally circuitous. How many Scorpions or Executives have been registered?

“Oh, I don’t really have an exact figure.” Schramm side-stepped once more but indicated that possibly 2,000 two-place machines were in the field along with maybe 600 of the earlier single-place models.

Has he considered going into full scale production with a finished machine? Schramm retorted, “No way!” The certification cost eliminated with an aircraft in the amateur-built (he dislikes the term homebuilt) category is a major factor in supporting RotorWay viability. Cost factors are also held in rein by eliminating the manpower-intensive assembly stages.

By leaving both licensing and labor to the purchaser, cost can be far better controlled. Aside from assembly and costly FAA certified approval, Schramm underlined how difficult it was to make a machine for a price when dependent on outside suppliers.

“You might build one,” he said, “but you certainly couldn’t compete.” Currently RotorWay goes unrivaled as far as kit helicopters are concerned and certainly feels little or no competitive pressure from the certificated community—at least on a cost basis.

To remain in this niche the company makes their own engines and all required castings. “You just can’t be in the kit heicopter business without a foundry,” Schramm noted. “If our engine castings came from outside, fifty percent would be scrapped — we would double our cost.”

He is rather proud of this development — apparently one of only two non-ferrous jobbing foundries in the Phoenix area and located in a burgeoning aerospace community. Of course the corollary to not building helicopters without a foundry is you can’t support such an undertaking on helicopter production alone.

Consequently a good deal of all brass and aluminum alloy output is for other aerospace companies such as Garrett and Hughes, as well as specialist marine requirements. “You can’t afford a foundry with this kind of quality production without outside work,” he said.

The foundry, therefore, seems to be the big money spinner at RotorWay and is organized as a separate enterprise. According to Schramm the helicopter operation makes no profit at all. This state of economics is not necessarily a grim picture but one any knowing entrepreneur might intentionally develop in order to protect his efforts and creatively maneuver his finances.

His description did little to confirm or deny RotorWay’s success. Certainly with a thriving foundry, helicopters could remain a hobby interest. All that could be concluded is that Schramm is still in the rotorcraft business however you slice the pie.

Major concerns for any aircraft manufacturer are the legal ramifications involved with the product. One major suit could easily destroy a small company. For a small company, a plaintiff with a clever attorney could sound an instantaneous death knoll, insurance or not.

The consequence is that RotorWay carries no product liability insurance at all. This sounds like a contradiction but Schramm’s idea of protection is to have nothing to protect. “I don’t own anything. I’m broke — there’s just enough to meet the payroll and pay interest on the loans.”

He adds, “You can sue me but all you’ll get is my underwear. There is nothing left at the end of the month.” The bank, he says, owns all the equipment—liquidation would bring very little anyway. His rationale is that insurance would mean high premiums and this would be reflected in the price of the aircraft.

And even then a juicy case could extend well beyond the insurance cover. The point about product liability is an interesting one. Since the owner becomes the builder, failure of the Exec helicopter in any manner is more difficult to attribute to the manufacture.

In this regard, the idea of an amateur-built machine affords RotorWay a far greater legal cushion. Another factor in considering amateur-built accidents is the fact that the owner has probably contributed six months to a year of valuable time to the project.

The builder might possibly treat his machine with greater respect than most based on the amount of effort that went into creating it. On the other hand, the wealthy professional man who buys a manufactured aircraft largely as a tax write-off may not be so endowed with a similar sense of discipline and responsibility.

In discussing the issue that a costly type certificate was not a factor inherent in the price of the machine, Schramm was quick to respond that this did not reflect on manufacturing quality. “A production certificate is a lot harder to get than a type certificate,” he replied.

“We have 1,800 parts each of which is made with two or three separate tolerances.” The manufacturer was standing by equipment used for checking critical castings. “This will calculate any dimensions to l/15th the thickness of a human hair,” he stated.

What about RotorWay Helicopter’s own quality control and computerized parts tracing? “We have to make a first class effort in both these areas,” Schramm quickly underlined. “If something breaks you can’t recall the entire fleet.”

A computer program was designed to record and track every individual part produced along with a record of its tolerances. Each Exec helicopter is composed of thirty-two kits which are sold in seven groups including the engine.

The engine is, of course, fully constructed. “You buy a group at a time,” Schramm mentioned, “and obviously we sell more starts than finishes.” Some builders will purchase the entire lot at once, but the alternative pay-as-you-go philosophy is obviously attractive.

By financing each construction stage independently the builder can happily take three or four years to complete without heavy financial burdens. This year was the first that a price reduction of $1,500 was offered for someone who buys the entire package at once.

The engine which RotorWay developed is interesting in that its 170-pound installed weight includes a water cooling system. By using water cooling when ram air is insufficient, Schramm reckons he saves seven horsepower adding seventy pounds of useful load to the aircraft.

The engine was designed specifically for this helicopter and outputs a maximum of 152 hp. He went back to the fact that the cost of the engine dramatically reflects in the finished aircraft price. A similar Lycoming powerplant would be priced thirty to fifty percent higher he reckons.

The airframe itself leaves a number of options. In order to qualify as an amateur-built machine, the builder must construct a minimum of fifty-one percent. He can buy a fully welded Exec helicopter airframe, for example, or finish the welding himself.

If he takes the former route he will have to do more work on the rotor blades, however. The flexibility allows the constructor to take advantage of the best skills available. Schramm estimates approximately 500 hours to complete the Exec model—the latest in the RotorWay line.

Originally starting with the single-place Scorpion (priced in 1968 at $12,000), the helicopter went through a range of developments resulting in the two-seat Scorpion II helicopter in 1971. Further (improvements led to the final Scorpion 133 helicopter.

In 1981 the Exec was born, a racier looking machine with a fully enclosed engine, removable cabin doors and sleek aerodynamic styling. Although the Scorpion helicopter is no longer in production, all parts are fully supported.

Schramm was quick to note that since his first effort the economy has seen a fifty percent devaluation in the dollar which would adjust the cost of the present helicopter to nearly that of the original.

The fuselage of the Exec helicopter consists of thirty-three fiberglass parts weighing seventy-five pounds. “You don’t have to make any fiberglass pieces yourself,” states Schramm, “and the alignment holes match up to within 1/8 of an inch.” All that’s left is cleanup, sand, pop rivet and paint.

Lap joints and jaggles are done for you so the result is a smooth, flush finish. According to the manufacturer, all parts are turned to final size so all that remains to do is make a smooth finished edge.

The Exec helicopter, with its 102 mph VNE, uses an all-metal rotor system with a bonded aluminum trailing edge similar to the Hughes 300 helicopter. The body is all fiberglass covering a 4130 steel tube frame. The original design Schramm claims is his, developed in conjunction with outside consultants.

Robinson R22 commercial helicopter personal transportation – the more expensive option!

“We wanted an enclosed helicopter with aesthetic appeal,” he noted. By using a monocoque tail boom and a modified frame he was able to keep the same empty weight as the Scorpion helicopter but increase the speed to over 100 mph.

“We changed the controls to dual push/pull cables rather than using — rods and bellcranks.” This simplified the collective and cyclic systems to about 1/10 the complexity but retained the dual redundancy of two cables. Elastomeric bearings were added to the rotor head which means longer flying with less fatigue offering for greater utility value.

Ninety-five percent of the 1,800 Exec parts are made by RotorWay. The Exec helicopter canopy, laid up by hand, is also produced in house. The shape gives an attractive quality to the helicopter and combines that egg-shaped appearance of the Robinson and Hillman machines.

Tooling required for such an effort is what keeps the competition at bay according to Schramm but whether or not there is room for competition in this narrow marketplace remains to be seen. “God gave me this market and I’ve been there ever since,” he said.

Schramm did indicate that the personal, amateur-built area is becoming fairly saturated. For this reason he is exploring further uses of the machine. Floats, a spray boom and a camera platform mount are all options for semi-commercial applications. Inflated, the Exec helicopter floats weigh twenty-five pounds each.

The spray attachment includes two ten-gallon tanks which take a low volume concentrate. Rotor heads atomize the spray efficiently enough to allow a 160-acre coverage. One would expect a fair amount of business transport use and some utility functions.

Farmers, of course, can buy the spray unit which makes the Exec an efficient crop duster and with floats available fish spotting becomes practical. The 400 pound payload is restricting for any larger commercial application, however. Schramm underlined the biggest problem in the small, light helicopter field as training.

“The difficulty faced by Robinson was that a lot of doctors and lawyers started buying helicopters and wiped out. This gave the manufacture a bad accident track record and stifled sales.” In an early stage of Scorpion development he realized that most wouldn’t follow the same learning route that he had taken.

“I knew that people would need training in type. The question was, how do you do that in the amateur-built category?” In 1975 a training program was started at the RotorWay factory devoted to teaching Scorpion builders how to fly their own machines.

Apparently Exec helicopter 1,000 owners have been through the course which involves not only flight training but construction and maintenance on RotorWay equipment. The training program is broken into two or three one-week periods.

After the builder has completed ninety percent of his machine he can come to the Scorpion Sky Center for an initial instruction period to solo stage. He then returns home to practice the solo maneuvers and comes back for the next level of training.

“We devised a new concept for teaching people to fly their own machines,” Schramm emphasized. “We broke flight training into two distinct phases. First, hover in ground effect and, later, all the climbout maneuvers.”

By forcing the student to initially become proficient in ground effect handling, Schramm feels everything else becomes second nature. “This is a basic philosophy shift from military or commercial programs — we worked it out with the local CADO.”

Currently eight ships are available in the dual training fleet with two full time instructors and an inhouse designee/examiner for issuing licenses. The cost of the program is now included in the price of the machine but the course is also opened to second owners on a separate fee basis.

Prior to the training program, Schramm recommended that builders learn on the Hughes 300 or Brantly B2B. “This proved relatively unsuccessful,” he noted, “because ours was a smaller, lighter helicopter with different control feel.” Schramm discussed the philosophy behind his Exec helicopter.

“If you’re too performance oriented you start getting fatigue and if you’re not performance oriented you lose sales. Either way you’re out of business — it’s a very fine line.” He noted that the biggest proportion of the flying market is interested in helicopters but no one offered the proper vehicle. “From an evolutionary standpoint helicopters are still in the dark ages.”

He added, “The Apache helicopter is a fantastic aircraft but still a scaled-up version of the Hughes 500 helicopter with a lot of electronics. It has no fewer mechanical parts than any other helicopter.” Schramm stated, “What we have to do is build a helicopter in a more sophisticated context that makes use of available manufacturing technology.” RotorWay stands in a class by itself.

“A large company could do what we’ve done but it would require a 10-15 million dollar investment,” commented Schramm. “There just are not the financial rewards here to justify that.” He talks about economic survival as a very fine path.

Presently his computer tracks progress on the fifty plus workers and Schramm insists that if he is more than two percent off in his production figures the company would go bankrupt. It is clear that one of Schramm’s motivations is his love of rotorcraft but this alone can’t substantiate a business.

One supposes that when you have a good grip on, at best, a tenuous market then the idea is to discourage anyone else from horning in. Tooling available in the 75,000-square-foot factory could produce 500 to 1,000 units per week but Schramm wouldn’t quote figures. All he would say is, “The market is saturated.”

It would seem that only two to three helicopter kits per week roll off the line so perhaps his parting comment should be taken quite literally, “If you want to make a profit, stay a long way away from aviation.”

The post BJ And The Exec Helicopter Interview appeared first on Redback Aviation.

Rotorway Scorpion Two Kit Helicopter

ARTICLE DATE: August 1978

A couple of months ago, we did a pirep on a homebuilt helicopter, the Hillman Hornet version of the Helicom Commuter helicopter. At the time, we mentioned that the Hornet was a relative newcomer on the helicopter kit scene, and that its crosstown rival, the RotorWay Scorpion helicopter, had been around for some time.

This month, we’ll take a look, not only at the Scorpion helicopter itself, but at the remarkable operation that manufactures and supports it, and the equally remarkable man in charge of the entire project, B. J. Schramm.

If there’s a single word that describes the RotorWay concept — both of building the Scorpion helicopter and of learning to build and fly it — that word would have to be “completeness.” My first visit to the RotorWay facility in Tempe, a suburb of Phoenix, Arizona, left me almost stunned with its size and complexity.

True, much of the facility, particularly the RotorWay foundry and machine shop, are not exclusively dedicated to production of Scorpion helicopter kits.

The foundry, for example, is a largely automated facility set up for the production of a wide range of rather complex castings in almost any nonferrous metal, and much of its output is subcontract work for other manufacturers—for example, electronic-equipment housings for Motorola.

Additionally, quite a bit of foundry production is devoted to RotorWay’s own specialized products, which are based on very small two-stroke engines. These include a gas-powered hand drill, ditto circular saw, “Grass Hog” weed trimmer, and so forth.

What’s important here, though, is that the manufacture of these diversified products supports the foundry— and, in fact, a large part of RotorWay as a whole—so that its services are available for the production of helicopter parts.

The same holds true for the machine shop, and the result is a helicopter kit with a staggering array of parts designed and manufactured specifically for the Scorpion helicopter, rather than bought off-the-shelf.

Thus, many of the Scorpion’s parts can be optimized for. minimum weight, where a standard part might be heavier—and the specialized parts range from tiny brackets and bushings all the way up to the engine itself, a RotorWay-designed and built 4-cylinder water-cooled 4-stroke that puts out 133 hp.

In a sense, the RotorWay factory is more like a miniaturized version of a “real” aircraft factory than a homebuilt “manufacturer.” The “real aircraft” idea is carried on into quality control and documentation.

All Rotorway Scorpion helicopter parts are logged in and out of various manufacturing and inspection steps so that each part is traceable, right back to the original lot of raw materials.

Thus, for example, if a given owner in the field finds that a certain casting is cracking, the factory can not only trace the fault and find out why it’s cracking, but can also find and notify all the other helicopter operators in the field who have a casting from the suspect lot or production run.

The actual helicopter end of RotorWay activity is concentrated in a facility called the “Sky Center,” located across a large field from the foundry and factory buildings. The Sky Center is an integral part of Mr. Schramm’s philosophy of a complete program.

Not only does it serve as a hospitality and demonstration center for prospective Scorpion builders, but it also provides classrooms in which the active builders attend construction seminars.

As part of the complete Scorpion package, builders are encouraged to come to Tempe and learn proper construction techniques, using hands-on experience on actual Scorpion parts and sub-assemblies.

A “walking beam” arrangement transmits collective motion from the flexible cable to the blades, while the entire hub rocks for cyclic control.

They also use a library of special color video cassettes to cover certain areas. In this way, RotorWay hopes to achieve a uniform and acceptable level of construction technique and expertise, no matter how diversified the backgrounds of the builders may be.

The Sky Center also operates a fleet of Scorpions for flight training. Another part of the complete package is two separate sessions of flight training: one takes the neophyte up to and including hover solo in the Scorpion, while the second moves on into actual “up and away” flight techniques.

B. J. Schramm feels that the totality of the Scorpion package is a key to its present and future success, and that such total control — as well as almost total independence from sub-contractors for anything more complex than 4130 steel tubing, aluminum ingots, and bulk items like nuts and bolts—is essential to the design’s continued safety record (see interview).

At any rate, with minds and legs suitably numbed by the complete tour we’d received, it seemed a good time to start looking at the Scorpion itself; we acquainted ourselves with various parts of the aircraft in roughly the same order as they’d come to the homebuilder.

The basic airframe of the Scorpion is a weldment of 4130 chrome-molybdenum tubing. It consists of a central cluster which supports the engine, transmission, controls, and cabin, and a long tailboom which curves up at the aft end, hence the “Scorpion” name.

The airframe is shipped to the homebuilder with all tubing accurately pre-cut, mitered, and tack-welded at the factory.

It’s recommended that the services of an experienced welder be obtained to complete the major welding with a minimum of fuss and delay and a maximum of safety, although it can safely be assumed that at least some of the homebuilders will have had experience building other steel tube aircraft and will be able to do their own welding.

The airframe includes the skid landing gear. The major powertrain components bolt to the airframe just aft of the cabin area. The Scorpion’s transmission is a hybrid of two types: primary drive from the engine is by means of multiple V-belts, with an idler that can be disengaged and serves as a rotor engagement clutch on startup.

The large driven pulley in turn drives a sprocket-and-chain arrangement, running in an oil bath, for final gear reduction to the rotor shaft. Tail rotor drive is taken from the transmission and carried aft via long V-belts, with an idler/relay pulley halfway out the tailboom.

Smaller V-belts from the engine drive the water pump and cooling blower for the radiator. The rotor system and its controls are the next major assembly we considered; Schramm’s design uses a rather unique control system which is deserving of special mention.

The basic rotor design is a semi-rigid underslung type, with teetering and rocking hinges. A single pushrod from the cyclic swashplate transmits motion, not to pitch horns on the blades (as in, for instance, a Bell or Hornet) but directly to the rotor hub itself.

Thus, cyclic control is accomplished by rocking the entire hub, rather than by cyclic feathering of the individual blades. Collective control does use the pitch horns: a flexible Bowden cable runs up through the center of the rotor mast and turns back downward to move one blade’s pitch horn directly, while a “walking beam” arrangement reverses the direction of movement for the other blade. Thus, the only time there’s any actual movement about the rotor’s feathering hinges is when the pilot is actively moving the collective stick.

The arrangement also means that, at rest, there’s no frictional loading, and the collective feels like it’s flopping loosely; there’s no collective friction lock, either. With the rotor turning, centrifugal and aerodynamic forces snug on, up the bearings to the point at which as the collective stays put.

A look at the control systems give a good impression of the extent to which specialized parts are used.

Where the various and sundry brackets, bellcranks, and links in the controls of the average homebuilt helicopter are bandsawed from heavy stock or welded up from sheet or tube, in either case resulting in a distinctly “homebuilt” look, the control parts of the Scorpion incorporate all sorts of castings and machined parts, and is, look and feel thoroughly professional.

The collective linkage includes a correlation system to minimize required throttle-twisting. The antitorque pedals are connected to the tail rotor by means of another long flexible Bowden cable. Dual controls are optional, but are ordered on virtually all Scorpions. The heart of any helicopter is its engine, and the Scorpion’s RW 133 engine is one of its most impressive features.

Until a year or so ago, Scorpions were equipped with two-stroke, water-cooled Evinrude V-4s, originally developed as the powerheads of big outboards. These were the only engines offering the required power-to-weight ratio with an acceptable degree of reliability.

Since then, though, Schramm and his cohorts have developed their own engine—again, only possible for a firm having access to the kind of sophisticated foundry and machining capabilities that RotorWay has.

V-belts are used to drive the Scorpion tail rotor.

The RW 133 has a displacement of 133 cu. in., and puts out an impressive one horsepower per cubic inch, a volumetric efficiency quite rare in an engine this small. Output shaft speed is 4500 rpm, much higher than that of an airplane engine but perfectly acceptable for a helicopter, which requires elaborate reduction gearing (or belting) in any case.

In fact, the high engine speed is necessary for good efficiency; other contributing factors include the water cooling, which allows safe use of high compression and its attendant high combustion temperatures, and tuned intake and exhaust manifolds.

For those who plan operations at high altitudes and/or hot weather, a turbo charger is available as an option. The engine is built almost entirely at the Rotorway factory; in fact, virtually all of its parts are produced from scratch right on site, including very elaborate castings for such parts as the water jackets and crankcase.

Even ferrous-metal parts such as crankshafts, which cannot be cast in the foundry, are forged by a sub-contractor and shipped in a rough state to Rotorway for actual machining.

Prior to shipment, each engine is run in a dyno which is, for all practical purposes, a truncated Scorpion, so the customer can be sure that it will meet specs in his actual installation. The cabin enclosure is supplied by RotorWay in the form of laid-up fiberglass shells.

The rear section contains the seat pans as an integral part; the windshield must be mounted at a fairly precise angle on the forward section, since airflow over it in forward flight influences the trim of the helicopter. The cabin shell is whitish, with final choice of color up to the homebuilder. B. J. Schramm himself was my pilot and mentor for a brief demonstration flight.

Normally, no one gets to fly the Scorpion without going through the whole flight training program, regardless of prior experience, but for this occasion he consented to install the right-seat cyclic, although the only collective on this particular ship was the one on his side.

One of Schramm’s concepts, and one of the rationales behind his elaborate training and construction programs, is that the Scorpion pilot will know enough about his ship to be his own mechanic—and, of course, will be familiar enough with his bird so that he can feel when something’s in need of adjustment.

Sure enough, when we got into the snug little cabin, B. J. stirred the cyclic about a bit, decided that it was a little too stiff in the fore-aft direction, produced a wrench, and reduced the friction in one of the torque links at the swashplate. This reduced cyclic friction to its normal level — of none at all with the rotor at rest.

The collective, of course, feels similarly “disconnected” until the blades start turning. Like most highly-tuned engines, the RW 133 seemed to need a bit of tickling and prodding before finally starting; once running it settled down to an idle that impressed me with its smoothness and quiet.

Of course, water-cooled engines, with their thick water jackets and no fins to radiate noise as well as heat, are inherently quieter than air-cooled types; exhaust noise was also quite low, and should be even less in the turbocharged version.

A good-sized handle to the left of the pilot’s seat engages the V-belt idler and gets things in motion at the top of the rotor mast; with the rotor up to speed and the separate engine and rotor tachometers indicating the right values, the throttle can be cut to “split the needles” and make sure the overrun clutch is working properly.

There’s no mag check, since the engine uses single ignition; according to Schramm, with the RW 133’s — small displacement and high compression ratio and speed, this is entirely sufficient.

B. J. made ,the takeoff, climbed to a cruise altitude of about 500 feet above ground, and got things generally squared away before he let me try my hand at the controls, and I can see why RotorWay usually makes sure that anyone planning to fly the Scorpion gets some dual instruction and/or tethered hover practice first.

I found the controls very responsive to even the slightest movement; at the same time, the combination of high rotor speed, low disc loading, and the “flying hub” control system make the helicopter feel a bit different, at least to me, from even the lightweight Hughes or the little Brantly in which I got my CFI-H.

I found myself tending to over-control, with pitch attitude wandering quite a bit, although things felt a bit better after a few minutes.

I also found myself a bit disoriented by the lack of a collective on my side; I’m just not use to not having anything to do with my left hand, and I’m sure this contributed to a certain level of tension and unfamiliarity which can’t have helped my helicopter skills, such as they are.

(Of course, all the ships used at RotorWay for actual dual instruction have complete dual controls; the ship we were flying was B.J.’s own “pet helicopter.”)

On our way back to the Sky Center’s grass-lined practice area, B.J. demonstrated an autorotation. What with the light disc loading, the Scorpion doesn’t come down too terribly fast, which is nice, but the same factor causes it to shed rpm pretty quickly when the power is cut.

Of course, the rpm comes back equally quickly in the flare, but there’s not too much blade inertia, so the flare itself struck me as quite rapid, with a considerably more pronounced nose-up angle than I’m used to from production helicopters. We used a power recovery, so I can’t say how gently the ship will set down from an auto.

We then returned to the pad, making an approach to a spot some 100 feet short of the pad and hovering up to it in ground effect. I tried my luck at a hover, and again found the little helicopter quite a handful.

While V could note increasing familiarity and improvement even in the 5 minutes or so we spent in the hover, I still had that “balancing on a beach ball in the deep end of the pool” feeling that I recall from my student days.

The rule in helicopters that “the bigger they are, the easier to handle” seems well borne out in the Scorpion. Even so, I’m favorably impressed, pot only by the aircraft but especially by the program under which it’s manufactured, distributed and supported.

The program is unique in aviation, and it will be interesting to watch its current and future progress. The kit is unbelievably complete, and while the price tag of $13,500 seems a bit steep at first glance, let us not forget that this is the era of the $5,000 Volkswagen!

I’m looking forward to the chance to fly a Scorpion enough to become reasonably proficient in the thing, at which time we’ll do a follow-up pilot impression; we’ll also try to fly one or two owner-built birds, rather than just the factory ships.

In the meantime, suffice it to say that it’s a remarkably sophisticated helicopter, especially for a homebuilt, produced by a sophisticated firm in a sophisticated program—and for the ambitious homebuilder, it can offer a unique, *ancf sophisticated, reward.”

B. J. Schramm and the Scorpion. Now, the big question: will he fit inside?

As the dean of the homebuilt-helicopter entrepreneurs — in fact as the first person to successfully develop and market a homebuilt chopper — B. J. Schramm has a lot to say. He’s an impressive figure even if considered only in light of the Scorpion, not to mention his founding and developing RotorWay as a whole.

When we went to visit RotorWay, we soon found that our interview with Mr. Schramm went far beyond the confines of the Scorpion, ranging out into the underlying philosophy of the aircraft business as a whole.

Here, though, are a few excerpts that apply directly to the Scorpion:

Schramm: . . . the people that are spending money now on Cessna 152s will, in the next few years, be thinking very seriously about spending that money op RotorWay products.

Question: So you feel that your market is presently buying fixed-wing airplanes?

Schramm: A good portion of it is. In the recreational area per say and I would say we have been 80% recreational in the past. We’re getting more and more utilitarian, and I think you’ll see that when you analyze the ship a bit closer.

In the future, if we are going to be successful on a numbers game basis, we are then going to have to become more utilitarian, and as we approach that utilitarian market, we are going to have to begin to compete, in a sense, with the people that are out there buying fixed wings now . . . let’s face it, we aren’t going to sell helicopters like recreational vehicles.

Question: Do you see yourself developing to the point of producing a manufactured helicopter, as opposed to a kit?

Schramm: Well, we haven’t begun to scratch the surface of the market in the amateur-built category yet.

Question: Legally, for example, don’t you think there are limits as to how utilitarian you can become? Artificial limits that are constrained upon you by the experimental type certificate?

Schramm: Not in the helicopter area. We have had our helicopters operate in the same areas, other than densely populated areas, that any other helicopters do.

W 133

Question: Yes, but they can’t operate for hire – true?

Schramm: That is correct. In some countries they cannot be used for financial gains, meaning they are pure pleasure craft – not to be operated for paid work like paying someone to muster cattle or spray fields. BUT! technically, you can do this yourself as the owner operator of your helicopter.

Question: And they can’t operate to give required flight training?

Schramm: No. But how many businessmen use their Cessna 152s for hire? They’re using them for their own business. You can use this ship for your own purposes.

Question: You can use an experimental aircraft in the furtherance of your own personal ventures, but you can’t hire it out to someone else?

Schramm: That’s right.

Question: Let’s say I’m a surveyor, because here is an ideal application . . . I hop in my Scorpion and buzz off to a hilltop and put down my corner reflector, and then I fly to another hilltop and take a shot at it. And then I charge the people I do this for an arm and a leg. And I’m not going to run into problems from the Feds?

Schramm: No, this is in your own business. As a farmer, you could fly out over your land every day and see where the water spots are and where you want to put more fertilizer, and that’s your own business.

Question: If that’s not a limitation, then certainly there’s a limitation in that whoever wants to use your product has to assemble it.

Schramm: Oh, yes, and we like that because we don’t think that anyone should become involved with the Scorpion unless they have some mechanical capability, unless they are prepared to work on the ship themselves.

Question: Tell us some more about the power plant.

Schramm: Well, first of all, I think we could say that any aircraft is the power plant, it’s that important. Without the power plant, you don’t have much of an aircraft. We are dealing, here in the helicopter area, with a very specialized piece of equipment . . . if we go to a 125 or 150 hp Lycoming, we’re dealing with a 300-400 pound engine.

That means that if we’re going to build a reliable helicopter, we’re going to build the same size helicopter that Hughes has in the 269 or 300. Now, if we build that size ship, we’re competing with them! So we couldn’t; we found that we had to have a specially tailored power plant.

You can’t build your power plant until you have your own pattern-making facilities, foundry, tool and die shops, and your own in – house machining capability. You’ve got to have an engine factory.

Question: What are some of the problems you’ve come up with?

Schramm: What we’ve done, in dealing With the market, is that we have learned over a period of years — and we’re still learning—how to communicate this miserable mass of vibrating motion to Mr. John Q. Public in a palatable way he can understand.

This is a big task We started out with conventional plans, three-view drawings, pictures and numbers like everybody else did, and have evolved into a much more advanced system.

Question: Advanced in what way?

Schramm: At the present, the program that we use is called “See-Do.” Our manuals are based on this type of format . . . receiving inspiration from Popular Science Magazine’s concept of the “Wordless Workshop.”

RotorWay has developed a form of pictorial presentation which strongly emphasizes the belief that a picture saves many words. The goal of this system is to break a job down into a series of simplified steps providing a procedural path through what may have initially appeared to have been a difficult task.

Question: How long does it take, on the average and for the average person, to assemble a Scorpion?

Schramm: Well, these times have been changing as the years go by, because our program of instructions has been improved, and the quality control and fit of our parts has also improved.

I would say that a person could get a ship together now in about a 6 to 8 month period, if he put some effort into it. At this point, our average construction time is around a year and probably going down. It was up around a year and a half.

Buy this helicopter kit and RotorWay will teach you to fly it . . . after they teach you to build it.

The post The Scorpion Helicopter Package appeared first on Redback Aviation.

Single Seat Scorpion One Kit Helicopter

Powered by a 115-hp engine, this whirlybird cruises at 75 mph and has a 140-mile range. You can build it from 15 separate kits for a total outlay of about $3650

ARTICLE DATE: March 1972

THE SCORPION is a rare bird — a homebuilt that is a true helicopter, not an autogyro. The difference? A copter’s rotor is powered while that of an autogyro spins only in reaction to aerodynamic forces.

It’s a more sophisticated — and more expensive — form of air transportation than its simpler rotary-wing cousin. The Scorpion comes in kit form — in 15 different kits, to be exact.

There’s one for every major component—the rotor head, the powerplant, landing gear, and so on. The advantage to the homebuilder is that he can buy a few kits at a time, building the bird piecemeal and laying out hundreds—instead of thousands — of dollars at a clip. The Scorpion is not cheap. Total price, less engine, comes to about $3650.

The Scorpion is a souped-up version of a copter first flown by B. J. Schramm, its designer, in 1965. Powerplants are outboard marine engines: an 85-hp Johnson, or a 100-hp or 115-hp Evinrude. The four-cylinder Evinrudes have proven popular because of the extra power.

LEFT: Cockpit is small but uncluttered and comfortable.
RIGHT: FROM LANDING SKID to rotor, the Scorpion stands six feet high. A two-seat model is also available.

A 115-hp Scorpion helicopter has an empty weight of 450 pounds and a gross weight of 750 pounds. It boasts a maximum speed of 85 mph and a cruise speed of 75. Rate of climb is 1200 feet per minute and the service ceiling is said to be 12,000 feet. Normal fuel capacity of 10 gallons provides for a top range of about 140 miles.

The airframe is a simple tubular steel job with a variety of fiberglass pilot enclosures available. The main rotor is 20 feet in diameter and the tail rotor 3 feet 4 inches. Overall length is 17 feet and the height hits 6 feet.

LEFT: RESEMBLING A BIG FLYING BUG, “stripped” version of Scorpion moves slowly across a California field.
RIGHT: FIBERGLASS FUSELAGE, bubble windshield, wheeled landing gear can easily be added to basic craft.

The rotor system incorporate s a two – bladed, semirigid main rotor and a Schramm-developed Tractable Control Rotor System. The rotor hub is fabricated of aluminum and the blades are attached to it by retention straps. The two-bladed tail rotor is also aluminum.

Though the Scorpion helicopter could never be considered the typical homebuilt craft, it has proved popular among the do-it-your-self set. Last year, a dozen Scorpions showed up at a Midwest airshow.

LOOPED CABLE RUNS THROUGH ROTOR SHAFT (photo at left) to provide pitch control. V-belts (center) transmit power from the engine to the small tail rotor. Favorite powerplant among home-built helicopter flyers is four-cylinder, 115-hp Evinrude marine engine. It provides more muscle for faster climbs and hotter performance.

EDITOR: Add a modern Inntec 800cc engine from an Atrtic Cat, round out the windscreen to the nose, and you are “still” looking at a very capable “and” affordable single seat helicopter.

The post The Scorpion: A Real Helicopter From A Kit appeared first on Redback Aviation.

Aerokopter AK-1 Kit Built Helicopter Image Gallery

Introducing The Upgraded Exec 90: a chopper for the 1990’s.

ARTICLE DATE: January 1992

I flew the Rotorway Exec kit helicopter for the first time in 1984 for a story. Back then, I had no helicopter rating, no helicopter time and essentially no knowledge of what makes rotary wing machines tick…or whirl. My first assignment was to keep the chopper at a consistent altitude in the vicinity of the huge training pads.

I couldn’t do it. I was all over the field. I couldn’t hold altitude, heading, position or speed for more than two seconds at a time. The machine became friendlier after about three days and six flight hours, and I eventually learned to pick up the Exec and hover in place with a semblance of control.

I returned to Phoenix recently to fly the new Exec 90 helicopter, the latest version of the machine, dramatically revised and upgraded for the ’90s (thus the new designation). In the half-dozen years since my introduction to helicopters, Rotorway has been sold and reorganized by new owner John Netherwood.

He built the first Exec in Britain, retired from the forklift business and became Rotorway’s British dealer, mostly for fun. When Rotorway ran into financial problems early last year and filed bankruptcy, Netherwood jumped at the opportunity to acquire the company and closed the deal in April of 1990, naming the new company Rotorway International.

Though the Exec always was one of the better looking helicopters, and that has only changed for the better, Netherwood had his own ideas about what needed fixing on the aircraft.

He felt the people who knew the Exec best, a dozen of Rotorway Aircraft’s designers and engineers, might have even better insight. They did, and the 18 changes that produced the Exec 90 are primarily a result of their input.

Since the Exec 90 is the only two-place homebuilt helicopter on the market, it’s probably only fair that it uses its own engine, manufactured specifically for the aircraft. B. J. Schramm, designer of the Exec and the Scorpion before that, was the originator of the first 133-cubic-inch Rotorway engine back in the mid-’70s.

The engine was progressively improved and upgraded to 162 cubic inches; then, granted a new water jacket, new heads and sodium-filled exhaust valves.

The latest version is designated the RI162 and rated for 150 hp at 4250 engine rpm. Channeled through an eight-to-one reduction gearing system, the main rotor turns at about 520 rpm at red-line.

With a 25-foot diameter blade chopping up the sky overhead, the rotor is generating tip speeds of about 404 knots or Mach .61, resulting in relatively quiet flight (for a kit helicopter).

What makes the RI162 engine unusual is that it’s water-cooled. Liquid cooling can be a definite advantage on those missions that demand extended hovering, since cooling is less dependent upon airflow across the cylinders.

Since you asked, TBO on the RI162 is 1000 hours, with a top overhaul recommended at 500 hours, and those are probably fairly realistic figures, if lower than you might expect of an aircraft engine.

Remember, however, that helicopter stage lengths typically are far shorter than those of fixed-wing machines, so time doesn’t build up as quickly. With only 17 gallons capacity and a burn rate of about 8 gph, you couldn’t safely fly much over two hours anyway, and the majority of helicopter flights are considerably shorter than that.

Under these guidelines, 150 hours a year would be high utilization. As partial compensation for the Rotorway’s reduced TBO, overhauls are somewhat less expensive than most pilots are used to with similar horsepower Lycommings and Continentals.

A typical top performed by Rotorway International runs about $900. A full-blown overhaul costs roughly $4,000. (In contrast, the Lycoming 0-320-B2C installed in the R22 costs $9,000 to overhaul, though it is rated for 2000 hours between overhauls.) Netherwood made a number of other significant changes in creating the Exec 90 kit helicopter.

Tail-skins and rotor blades were upgraded from .020- to .025-inch aluminum to improve tail rotor life. (The old tail rotors were rated for only about 250 hours, and Rotorway International believes the new blades will last twice that long.)

The main rotorshaft was lengthened and thickened, adding both strength and smoothness and contributing to performance. Main rotor TBO is 500 hours. A new landing gear was designed to distribute landing loads more evenly and to accommodate a skid weight that could be positioned for solo flying to off-set the weight of the right seat passenger.

For a variety of aerodynamic reasons, light helicopters often suffer from lateral CG problems. On the old Exec, things were fine as long as you always operated solo or always flew with a passenger. Re configuring from solo to a passenger or vice versa was a true pain.

It was necessary to reposition the battery and add weight on the right side to maintain a proper lateral CG in order to fly solo. To switch from dual to solo on the Exec 90, the pilot merely moves a 25-pound weight from a mounting stub just aft of the engine to the tip of the right skid.

Other improvements to the Exec 90 include a revised fiberglass doghouse (the fairing surrounding the rotor shaft), eyebrow windows above the cabin, a modernized cyclic with buttons for starter, intercom and transmitter, an overhead switching console, a dual rotor/engine tachometer and other small changes to round out the upgrade.

I flew the new Exec 90 from Stellar Airpark south of Phoenix near the four-acre site of Rotorway’s future manufacturing and corporate headquarters.

This time around, flying the Exec 90 was pure joy. Like most helicopter students these days, I earned my rating in a Robinson R22, an excellent trainer and one of the most sensitive small helicopters on the market, so the Exec 90’s quick control response made me feel right at home.

Long ago, when I was working toward my instrument rating, my instructor coached me to think of control inputs as pressure rather than movement, and that system works just fine on the Exec 90.

If you’re too bold on the cyclic or collective, you almost inevitably over-control. The helicopter is so responsive, it’s almost psychic. It seems to translate the mere thought of a maneuver into action—something like a non-aerobatic, rotary wing Pitts SIS.

Personally, I’ve always been something of a control freak in aircraft of all descriptions, so the lighter the touch the better. Hovering in an Exec 90 is simple once you get the hang of letting your fingers do the flying rather than using your whole arm and once you learn which anti-torque pedal to push.

Since he’s used to driving on the left in England, John Netherwood is probably delighted that his Exec 90’s main rotor rotates the “wrong way,” clockwise rather than counterclockwise like the Robinson R22 and other American helicopters.

In practice, the difference is moot. Some aerodynamic forces must be countered with opposite pedal, but the adjustment during liftoff, hovering and translation to forward flight is virtually automatic.

Gross weight on the Exec 90 is listed at 1425 pounds, and since a typical empty weight runs about 925 pounds, you’ll be left with a useful load of around 500 pounds. Subtract fuel weight (110 pounds) and the helicopter can legally carry a substantial 390 pounds of people and things.

That’s a pair of 190 pounders plus a camera bag, more than most two-place fixed-wing machines can handle. As it turns out, the Exec 90 lifts the weight well. Climb performance is good, certainly better than you’d expect from a comparably-powered fixed-wing airplane.

Count on about 1000 fpm from sea level under ideal conditions at 50 to 60 mph. In the real world of worse than standard conditions, that means you’ll normally experience 700 to 800 fpm with a full load and rarely need to climb for longer than four or five minutes.

Speed and altitude don’t mean as much to a helicopter pilot as to an airplane pilot. A helicopter is in its element at comparatively low altitudes, and for that reason, truly high altitude performance isn’t particularly relevant.

The ability to hover in high terrain can be an important consideration, however, especially if you live in the Mountain West. The Exec 90 can hover in ground effect (inevitably abbreviated HIGE) at a 7000-foot density altitude, and out of ground effect (HOGE) at 5000 feet.

In other words, like most small, non-turbocharged helicopters, the Exec 90 isn’t in its element at places such as Denver, El Paso or Albuquerque in the summer when density altitudes often soar to five-figure heights.

The kit helicopter can still operate at reduced weights up high or in situations that don’t demand extensive hovering. Service ceiling is listed as 10,000 feet, in case anyone cares to fly high.

A helicopter’s greatest utility comes in its ability to operate independent of airports on short legs, so blazing speed isn’t a prerequisite. That’s not to suggest the Exec 90’s near-100 mph cruise isn’t gratifying.

Level at 500 feet above the desert with power two inches below max, I saw indicated airspeeds nudging 100, and vibration wasn’t excessive. All light helicopters manifest some low frequency vibration at high speeds. In sideways or backwards flight, the Exec 90 is limited to 20 mph.

Like all helicopters, the Exec 90 is best operated with due respect for altitude and airspeed limitations. On the Exec 90, a safe autorotation is possible at zero airspeed from 500 feet AGL or from 60 feet at 60 knots forward airspeed.

These limits are defined in a chart called the height/velocity envelope, and flight inside the shaded portion of that envelope isn’t recommended. In the event of a power failure in this envelope, the helicopter will lose lift and react similar to a fully stalled airplane.

The whole idea of vertical flight is that helicopters can do what most airplanes can’t, operate low and slow or low and stopped, but all helicopter pilots accept that their machines aren’t foolproof. Normal landings in the Exec 90 start with an approach at 65 mph, followed by a gradual deceleration and descent to maintain a flight profile outside the height/velocity limits.

The concept is similar to staying within gliding distance of the airport in a fixed wing. My flight with Stretch Wolter included a little of everything—steep approaches, autorotations, confined areas—and the Exec 90 acquitted itself admirably despite my amateurish technique.

The Exec 90 kit sells for $42,500, and that includes the RI162 engine, the elastomeric rotor head, a complete main rotor, dual controls, engine instruments, upholstery and virtually everything else you’ll need to wind up with a flyable helicopter.

Once you take delivery of the total kit, Rotorway suggests a first-time kit helicopter builder can expect to spend about 500 hours in the assembly process. Building an Exec 90 is mostly a matter of assembling components, though some welding is required so there’s also a little fabrication involved.

Apparently, the process isn’t too intimidating, as some 1000 kits have already been sold, and best estimates suggest at least 300 Execs are flying worldwide. At this writing, only four Exec 90s are in the air, but there should be nearly a dozen in the air by the end of 1991.

The post Executive Class Kit Helicopter appeared first on Redback Aviation.

Single Seat Scorpion One Kit Built Helicopter

OneUpmanShip

ARTICLE DATE: February 1971

First off, this pilot report is by “remote control” since Scorpion helicopters, more than favorite putting irons, handkerchiefs and maybe wives, are not for sharing. Affidavit your umpteen thousand hours of rotary-wing time, and the inevitable rebuff to your request to fly somebody’s one-man Scorpion will be: “You build it; you fly it.”

This would seem to betray a certain misgiving about the handling qualities of this tiniest of helicopters. And indeed, one Scorpion owner does tell about the high-time chopper pilot who climbed into his machine, pulled it into a hover and transformed the entire works into instant spaghetti by squeezing rudder the wrong way.

Nevertheless, no one has yet disproved the rotary-wing homily that the smaller the helicopter, the more jittery it will be to fly. As perhaps the world’s smallest helicopter, the Scorpion personal helicopter, therefore, would seem to qualify as the world’s trickiest.

The Scorpion personal helicopter qualifies as a true, full-hovering helicopter, not an autogyro. There are two body styles: this one with a large canoe-like fiber-glass sheath, and also a conventional skid gear version with a smaller plastic nose section, as above.

Confront Mr. B. J. Schramm with this observation, and if he has a Scorpion within reach, he may render you dizzy with his repertoire of zooms, swoops, quick-stops, and autorotations. Of course, tightrope walking over Niagara Falls might seem easy for someone who has cultivated this skill assiduously, so that’s no real proof.

But Mr. Schramm, president of Rotor Way, Inc., is willing to talk turkey. The control sensitivity of his 475-pound helicopter, he claims, is less “nervous” than that of a Brantly (which is damnably skittery), and slightly better than that of a Hughes 269 (slightly less damnably skittery).

Furthermore, says he, the Scorpion autorotates as well as or better than the Hughes. And that’s something a chopper pilot can relate to.

In other ways, however, Mr. Schramm holds unorthodox views about the rotary-wing business.

He figures a guy can not only build his own helicopter; he can teach himself to fly it. And to follow through on this idea, he’s developed an enterprise of no little magnitude, backed by a shiny new factory in the desert outside Phoenix, Arizona, plus the handsomest little $6,178 one-man helicopter ever to stir up dust, and an elaborate program of do-it-yourself construction and self-applied rotary-wing flight indoctrination.

The rotor blades have a steel leading edge, with an aluminum trailing edge bonded and screwed to a birch main spar. The airframe is made of tubular steel pre-bent at the factory. A five-gallon tank is mounted behind the rotor mast.

The tail rotor is driven by V-belt. Another set of six V-belts transfers power from the engine to a counter shaft with a clutch for autorotations. A second stage is reduction configured with a chain drive, thus eliminating conventional gear boxes and tail rotor shaft drives.

The helicopter itself represents a bundle of surprises and innovations. Practically everything is belt driven, including the main rotor and the tail rotor, eliminating gear boxes and shaft drives. Part of the re­duction sequence, however, employs a chain drive in the power train to the main rotor. The engine has perhaps the most unexpected heritage.

It’s a two-cy­cle, V-4, 115-hp Evinrude outboard motor called a Vulcan. According to Schramm, it is nicely suited to high-throttle running conditions, and its water cooling provides a greater margin of engine heat dissipation in hover operations than the conventional air-cooled aircraft powerplant.

In the Scorpion, cyclic and collective controls for changing the tilt of the main rotor disc and the pitch of the teetering blades are separate and distinct. A unique flexible push-pull cable sprouting up through the rotor hub handles collective pitch.

If the rotor system is different, it is also, according to Schramm, tough and trustworthy. “It is unbelievable what this rotor system will take. No other is designed to such high safety standards.” But then the entire machine is designed for the amateur.

“There are enough built-in tolerances so that no catastrophic errors can occur,” says Schramm, who with partner Bob Everts began developing the machine about 12 years ago. Along the way, they devised not only a unique hunk of hardware, but a program to introduce the very tricky business of helicopter piloting to the uninitiated.

Why not just tell the fellow to go out and learn to fly in some two-seater with a flight instructor in the conventional way? Because it costs $85 to $125 a gosh-durned hour — that’s why. But Mr. Homebuilder doesn’t simply hop into his newly finished Scorpion and tackle hovering autorotations.

The engine is a 115-hp outboard two-stroke with four cylinders in V-configuration. A ducted fan provides forced cooling of the water-cooled engine even during hover.

The loop at the top of the rotor mast is a push-pull cable, which changes blade pitch according to up-and-down movement of the collective in the pilot’s left hand. A motorcycle-type twist grip on the collective operates as a throttle, in conventional fashion, although the rotor blade turns in the opposite direction to most U.S. helicopters.

This calls for reversed rudder movements with collective pitch changes. Although the rotorcraft comes in kits with many precision parts finished, a considerable amount of home shop work remains to be done, including welding and cutting of brackets from sheet metal.

The factory holds him by the hand every inch of the way. Once the helicopter is ready for flight, Mr. Schramm himself will come out and inspect the machine (for the price of a one-way airline ticket), and fly it to see that everything’s in running order.

Then the factory program insists that the Scorpion be tied securely to the ground by each landing skid corner while the novice teaches himself to hover, limited by the tethers to not more than a few inches above the ground.

Smile, but don’t fly: no rotor. In this configuration a high, curving wind visor is available. Completely enclosed cockpits are also under design.

In little 5- and 10-minute increments, the embryonic pilot gains enough skill and confidence to cut the tether one day and attempt free hovering exercises.

And somewhere along the way before he attempts climbs, cruises, landing approaches, and engine-out autorotations, he is advised to go get those hours of dual instruction that he can’t do without. How well does the Scorpion actually handle through a boot-strap program like this one?

Builders we talked to say the idea seems to work. Some report that the helicopter works flawlessly and with unbelievable lack of vibration—after careful tuning and adjustment. Others report a bit of cyclic stick shake.

When properly adjusted and balanced, the Scorpion flies smoothly and with a minimum of vibration. Although component “lifetimes” are not computed and listed as with conventionally manufactured and certificated helicopters, designer Schramm maintains the rotorcraft is built with broad strength margins.

The one-man ship must be checked off by an FAA inspector under the experimental category, and the flyer must have a regular pilot’s license.

Some had trouble adjusting drive belt tension, and blew out a couple of sets of belts until they resolved the matter. And a continual upgrading program sends along occasional modifications from the factory.

At any rate, all the precision components come pre-finished, and the basement mechanic can buy things in financially digestible lumps, one at a time if he pleases. It takes about 600 man hours to construct the Scorpion, or six to eight months in spare time, evenings and weekends.

The Scorpion will hover, quick stop, do autorotations, and cruise at up to 70 mph. For the novice flyer, there is a beginner’s program of self-instruction, aimed at paring hours of expensive dual lessons.

No particular expertise is required (except a certain handcrafting talent and welding—though this can be farmed out), and since the aircraft comes under the Experimental category, it must be checked over by an FAA inspector.

Granted, the final result won’t have the conventional manufacturer’s suggested component lifetime limits. As one homebuilder explained it, “That’s something of a grey area.” But he figured that if Schramm has been flying them around for 12 years or so, “they must be pretty well proven.”

The post World’s First Personal Helicopter appeared first on Redback Aviation.

Rotorway Here To Stay

ARTICLE DATE: November 2000

Once a champion, always a champion

I’VE BEEN INTERESTED in helicopters for quite some time, and I started on this process by building a radio-controlled helicopter from a kit. When I decided to build a full-size one I could fly myself, I read all the information I could find about helicopters, including NTSB accident reports involving homebuilt helicopters.

Reading between the lines, I realized that the RotorWay Exec was a safe and reliable helicopter, so I decided to find a kit and build one. After scanning every issue of Trade-a-Plane for some months, my persistence paid off. I finally saw an advertisement for a 1992 RotorWay Exec 90 and called the listed number.

An airline captain had bought this particular kit but never got around to starting the project. He said the kit was complete; nothing was missing — not even a screw — and he was willing to let it go for a fair price. I closed the deal, picked up the Exec kit and brought it home.

I wanted to know everything about my “new” RotorWay, so I spent a lot of time in my workshop reading every word in the manual over and over again and memorizing every single parts listing until I was finally convinced I was ready to start construction.

I’ve always been pretty thorough about things like that. I don’t like to take questionable shortcuts, but I’ve always been ready to take whatever steps it would take to get the exact look I desired when the project was finally finished.

I started the project by fabricating the heat shielding out of .060 aluminum, then later had them gold-anodized. One of the locations for the heat shielding was underneath the fuel filter.

The battery is also mounted on the right side of the engine compartment (Photo 1). I then mounted an additional heat shield next to the fan shroud. Before assembling the fuselage, I painted the frame with white epoxy paint.

To contain some of the heat emanating from the muffler, I added another heat shield between the muffler and the lower fuselage skin. It’s essential to control excessive heat from certain areas of the engine.

While checking the plans, I realized that there might be a problem accessing the two fuel pumps after the fiberglass body pan was installed, so I worked out a way to position an access panel that would solve the problem of reaching the fuel pumps.

To make this access panel, I cut out a section of the fiberglass shell and fabricated an aluminum mounting plate to hold the mounting hardware for attaching the panel (Photo 2).

I wanted no further problem with this panel, so I not only pop-riveted it in place, I also epoxied it onto the body shell (Photo 3). Now I could easily get at the fuel pumps for maintenance or replacement if necessary (Photo 4). Photo 5 shows how nicely the panel blends into the surrounding structure.

I wasn’t through making changes yet. I fabricated the clamps that mount the fuel tanks to the frame from 4130 steel. The rubber strips are inserted between the clamp and the frame. The mounting hardware is all AN hardware.

I finished the tank modification by increasing the length of the fuel strainer to about four inches long and installed them in the bottom of the fuel tanks. I fabricated them by silver-soldering them together.

The anti-torque link was interesting to assemble. It’s mounted to the engine block and then to the frame. One of the most time-consuming operations during the building process was the fabrication of the instrument panel and radio rack (Photo 6).

After many hours of labor, I had the panel wired and the instruments installed. I also prefabricated the overhead switch panel at the same time. You can see it to the right of the instrument panel (Photo 7).

The radios are a King com radio on top and a King transponder on the bottom. I also use a GARMIN 195 GPS strapped to my left leg to assist me in navigation. The main control element of a helicopter is the cyclic stick.

First, I wired the cyclic handles. It’s a well-known fact that a pilot cannot let go of the cyclic stick while flying a helicopter. Unlike an aircraft, a helicopter needs constant stick response.

Because of this, many functions are installed into the grips, among them the radio flip/flop switch, engine start button, transponder IDENT button, any other accessories and the push-to-talk switch.

I reworked the cyclic stick a bit and ended up with a fit that was perfect for my hand. Note the buttons for the various functions (Photo 8). A good friend of mine, Bill Messer, owns an engine rebuilding shop and a connecting rod honing machine.

He honed the anti-torque (rudder) pedal to a perfect fit. We then added a ZERK fitting to both of the moving pedals. The other two pedals are bolted to the shaft and do not need grease fittings (Photo 9).

I finished the controls in the cockpit by adding the two collective throttle controls. The one on the passenger’s side can be removed, but I keep mine installed at all times. The pear-shaped casting on the shaft is the throttle stop, which is welded to the shaft (Photo 10).

The final assembling was getting closer to being finished. This view is looking rearward on the right side. This is the location of the fuel pumps and ignition racks and ignition wiring (Photo 11).

Next, it was time to start assembling the rotor head. As the Exec became ever more fully assembled, it was getting to be a tight fit in my workshop/garage. At this stage I was still attaching fiberglass body panels (Photo 12).

The Exec was test-flown in a series of hover test-hops. When the test flights proved successful, I reattached all the panels to the body and took this picture (Photo 13). The entire building process took me 1800 hours during a 15-month period.

I also modified the rear of the “doghouse” with another screen for additional cooling. It gets pretty hot down here in Central Florida (Photo 14). I also designed a “Freedom Eagle” design that I applied to the tail of the Exec.

I then added a “Freedom of Flight” logo to the side of the doghouse. The last logo I applied was my rendition of the “Exec 90” logo that corresponded to the version of the RotorWay I built. The latest Exec is called the 162F.

This version has FADEC controls for even smoother engine power. I thought the required “Experimental” declaration was a bit boring, so I changed the type style to a more modern font for a result that, I think, adds to the overall effect of the finished aircraft.

Learning to Fly my RotorWay Exec

I learned to fly in my own Exec after participating in the flying program at the RotorWay factory in Arizona. What amazed me most about learning to fly the Exec was how different it was from flying model helicopters.

My main problem was learning to hover correctly, but with the help of experienced flight instructors—and a great deal of persistence — it suddenly all came together. I’m now a rated rotary-wing pilot.

As of press time, I’ve logged more than 230 hours of flight time in my Exec, and I’m especially fond of taking good friends up for rides — particularly those who helped with their advice and physical labor throughout the construction of my RotorWay Exec, my pride and joy.

Does it fly well? You bet it does.

If you’re wondering whether I think that 15 months of intensive work building my Exec was worth it, my answer is: You bet! I especially felt that way when I picked up the Grand Champion Award at the EAA’s Sun ‘n Fun 2000 in Lakeland, Florida.

Editor’s Note: I met Bob Fiorenze many years ago when I was the editor of Scale R/C Modeler. Fiorenze, an experienced builder of outstanding scale models, is a family man who has been married to his wife, Anne, for 27 years, and they have three daughters.

His ducted-fan models of McDonnell Douglas F-4 Phantoms, finished in the U.S. Navy’s dark blue airshow color scheme, were spectacular. When Fiorenze flew his F-4, activity at the meet would come to a halt.

Not only was Fiorenze a museum-quality scale-model builder, he was an acclaimed worldwide championship flier—an exceptional combination of talents and dedication seldom found in the same modeler.

Fiorenze’s background was in building competition automotive engines back in his native Brooklyn, and it paid off with flawless running of the very finicky high-rpm engines used in the ducted-fan power units.

He eventually moved to the Orlando, Florida, area where he became involved in designing and building miniature helicopters, and researching the theory of building an operating Harrier Jump Jet.

That project never became a reality, but to obtain practical experience for the Harrier project, Fiorenze taught himself to fly model helicopters. He has a fixed-wing rating but had zero helicopter time. The thought of building his own full-size rotary-wing aircraft remained a dream until he read an advertisement in Trade-a-Plane.

I had not heard from Fiorenze for many years. Then, while reading a press release from RotorWay in Arizona, I suddenly came upon the news of Fiorenze’s winning Exec. When I called him, he said he’d be glad to share his experiences of building an Exec, as well as some photographs he’d taken during the construction process. The following article and photos are the result.

Norm Goyer

The post Building A Rotorway Exec Helicopter Kit appeared first on Redback Aviation.

The Rotorway Helicopter Companies Executive Decision

ARTICLE DATE: AUGUST 1989

RotorWay’s Exec isn’t just the only homebuilt helicopter kit available — it’s one of the most sophisticated and complete kit programs for any homebuilt aircraft

When you consider how massive a project almost any homebuilt aircraft can become, the prospect of a homebuilt helicopter can become daunting indeed – even if it is the Rotorway Helicopters Executive helicopter.

After all, even today’s exceedingly complete superkits for some of the com­posite high-performance two-place fixed-wing airplanes can re­quire anywhere from 1000 to 3000 hours of work to complete, and in some ways they’re much simpler than a helicopter.

Some­ times I wonder whether prospective kitbuilders realize how much work that is: If you’re employed full-time, with two weeks vaca­tion, you’re putting in only 2000 hours a year.

If you’re a really conscientious homebuilder, you might be able to put in up to 25 hours a week; that’s still sixty weeks — a year and two months — of unremitting work. Now think of how much more complex that might be if you were building a helicopter.

Not only do you have to build an air­ frame, but you have to install and align myriads of rotating dy­namic components, and the whole thing has to be precisely balanced or it’ll try to thrash itself apart. Isn’t that why commercial helicopters cost so much? I mean, look at that rotor head — it’s like a Swiss watch!

These thoughts are the conventional way of looking at the idea of a homebuilt helicopter project, but if you look a little deeper, you’ll find that it ain’t necessarily so.

An affordable and attainable homebuilt helicopter is, in fact, within the reach of quite a few would-be owners and pilots, and this is due almost entirely to the efforts of one man, B. J. Schramm, and his company, RotorWay Aircraft, Inc.

He’s been something of a voice crying in the wilderness about Rotorway Helicopters for quite a few years, and has been a steady fixture on the homebuilt rotorcraft scene — but it’s only in the last ten years or so that he’s really been able to offer the product he has wanted all along.

That product is the Exec, and by now it’s matured to a helicopter that, while a homebuilt, can’t be dismissed as such: It’s quite worthy of head-to-head comparison with production piston helicopters, even if B.J. and RotorWay don’t consider themselves to be competing in that market segment.

B. J. Schramm himself is an experienced rotorcraft engineer, and his first designs date back over 20 years. The first one offered to the public was the Javelin, a single-place ship with a steel-tube fuselage. In keeping with its era, it had a fiberglass pilot pod that looked like something right from the Jetsons TV show.

In those days, the hardest thing to find for a little helicopter was an engine with sufficient power-to-weight ratio, and B.J. embarked on a series of relationships with various liquid-cooled two-stroke engines derived from outboard motors. Like many young marriages, these were not without their occasional spats and even divorces.

At the same time, B.J., who’s nothing if not a savvy businessman, realized that it would be quite a while before he could live off the proceeds of his rotorcraft, so he founded (pardon the pun) another business: One of the most sophisticated foundries for non-ferrous metals in the country.

It’s obvious, though, that he did this at least partly with the fabrication of present and future helicopter parts in mind, since the name of the foundry is — what else? — RotorWay aka – Rotorway Helicopters.

As development of B.J.’s own helicopters continued, the RotorWay foundry kept busy turning out parts for such neighboring Ma and Pa businesses as Bell, Hughes, Sikorsky, and Motorola as well as an ever-increasing number of parts for B.J.’s own designs.

By this time, the Rotorway Helicopters Javelin had been retired in favor of the Scorpion, so-called because of the upswept stinger of its steel-tube tail boom; this, in turn, was soon joined by the two-place Scorpion II.

With the II, Rotorway Helicopters had its first product with real mass appeal — think of all those homebuilders’ wives who’d been saying don’t build anything you can’t take me along in.

With the greater size and weight of the two-place, Rotorway Helicopters had finally come up against the limitations of ex-outboard two-strokes, and the series of stormy marriages came to an end.

B.J. had finally had enough of compromises, and also had the not inconsiderable industrial resources of RotorWay foundries behind him, so the solution appeared simple: If you can’t find a suitable engine, build the (expletive, deleted) yourself!

Thus, the genesis of what was then the RW 133 engine, a 133-hp water-cooled four-cylinder opposed four-stroke. Do you grasp the magnitude of this undertaking?

People like Joe Horvath, Rex Taylor, or Peter Limbach will tell you how hard it is just to convert an already-engineered VW engine for aircraft use; RotorWay’s engine starts out as a few rough forgings for crankshafts, cams, and rods, and a stack of aluminum ingots that’ll be melted down to cast crankcases, cylinders, cylinder heads, manifolds, and so forth.

In subsequent years the engine increased in power and evolved into the present RW 152, and about the only major parts of it not made from scratch by Rotorway are the electronic ignition (Mallory) and the two-barrel carburetor (Dell’Orto).

By the beginning of the 1980s, B.J. realized that the homebuilding public was becoming extremely sophisticated, and wanted a product with more sex appeal than the somewhat angular Scorpion II, so he redesigned it to become the Exec.

The rugged steel-tube main structure, tying together the cockpit, landing gear, engine, “transmission” — of which more later — and main rotor system remained, but was now covered with a sleek fiberglass shell.

The former Rotorway Helicopters steel-tube tailboom, with its exposed V-belt tail rotor drive, was replaced by a monocoque aluminum structure (although the light, reliable, and inexpensive V-belt drive lives on inside it).

Finally, and most recently, the rotor system was re-engineered with asymmetric blades, unique in light piston helicopters and offering a major boost in performance, mounted in a new elastomeric-bearing rotor hub system.

Overall, the Rotorway Helicopters Exec looks remarkably similar to the turbine-powered Aerospatiale Gazelle, arguably one of the most handsome helicopters ever built.

With a high degree of control over both component price and quality due to in-house fabrication of almost everything larger than off-the-shelf fasteners, B.J. Schramm and his minions strove for an equal degree of control over both kit construction and homebuilder/pilot qualification.

Thus, when you buy an Exec kit (for a total investment, including tools and training, of about $40,000), you get quite a bit more than just the pieces to build a helicopter.

The plans are extremely complete and well done, and include exploded views, three-view drawings, and a series of over 500 see-do photographs — a sort of helicopter builders’ comix and stories — to take you through the process step-by-step.

Recent FAA decisions have allowed RotorWay to complete more of the process than they could in the past; for example, while the steel-tube airframe was always jigged, aligned, and tack-welded by RotorWay, all structural joints now come completely welded, with only minor brackets and tabs requiring field welding either by the homebuilder or by a hired gun.

There’s also much less welding required overall, since the former welded tube tailboom has been replaced by a monocoque structure of aluminum casting(!) bulkhead rings, stringers, and skins.

Since the Exec is fairly light, weight and balance are easy to determine.

It may seem a bit of overkill to use castings for bulkheads — but you begin to understand B.J.’s methods when you realize that these castings pick up the hangar bearings for the pulleys of the tail rotor drive. Part of the package includes extensive builder and pilot training.

Once you’ve completed your helicopter, but before you even run the engine, you come to RotorWays’ Sky Center near Phoenix, Arizona for Phase I training. There, you’ll spend a week in the classroom, learning not only basic helicopter aerodynamics but also how to balance and fine-tune your own ship.

This is considered an area that strikes fear into the hearts of even experienced pilots and mechanics, and most production helicopters are balanced using very sophisticated electronic equipment; according to RotorWays’ Stretch Wolters, an Exec properly balanced by a homebuilder won’t even register high enough on the scale of typical Chadwick balancers for further adjustment.

Rotorway Helicopters Phase I trainees also receive several hours of flight instruction in one of the Sky Center’s fleet of Execs.

This not only ensures that they’ll leave with sufficient skills to make safe liftoffs, hovers, and maneuvers in ground effect in their own Execs; it also keeps the factory’s Execs flying enough to make them the senior With Phase I under their belts, the new operators disperse to their homes for plenty of hover practice.

When they’re competent to perform a number of maneuvers and skill exercises, they return to the Sky Center and, after an initial screening, progress to Phase II — the full spectrum of helicopter flight.

After satisfactory completion of Phase II with any of several RotorWay instructors, they fall once again into the clutches of Stretch Wolters, who in addition to his other qualifications (including thousands of hours in RotorWay helicopters) is an FAA designated examiner.

Thus, you can essentially walk in off the street with no experience whatsoever, and emerge at the end of the process with not only a helicopter, but a Private Pilot/Rotorcraft license to exercise in it! I worked with Stretch during a recent visit to the Sky Center, currently located in Chandler but slated to move to the Glendale, Arizona, airport in the near future.

The original location, once well away from town, has been encroached on by other development such that the foundry and manufacturing facility have already been moved away; due to new buildings and obstructions, the Sky Center will soon follow, unfortunately forsaking a large building with hangar, shops, and lounge and four spacious helipads.

I spent the first hour or so in one of the facility’s video rooms sampling the tapes which are provided to homebuilders.

Complex subjects like rotor system balancing are very well handled, and given the relatively light weight of the helicopter (1320 lbs gross) weight and balance is determined by the relatively simple expedient of hoisting the whole thing by its rotor mast and moving weight around until it hangs at the correct angle.

We moved on to a classroom for a look at some of the ship’s components. Rotorway ensures correct assembly by shipping critical parts groups as complete subassemblies; thus, for example, the main rotor shaft comes to the homebuilder with the entire cyclic and collective control system (a group of RotorWay aluminum castings, of course) as well as the rotor hub already assembled and in place.

Similarly, the secondary drive unit, a multi-belt aluminum sheave with the vital overrunning clutch in its center, comes pre-assembled and tested.

The engine, of course, is shipped ready to run — in fact, it’s already run several hours on a dynamometer to ensure that it meets specifications. Earlier, I put the word transmission in quotes; this is because the Exec doesn’t have the usual helicopter assemblage of gears and pinions.

Instead, primary drive from the engine is a group of V-belts to a large sheave containing the clutch, while secondary drive from the sheave is a sprocket with large roller chains driving a similar, but larger, sprocket at the base of the main rotor shaft.

The chains run in an oil bath, and the tail rotor V-belt takes off from the secondary drive. The system has no torque limitations, and belt slippage (allowed by a loose idler that’s locked into position after engine start) takes care of torsional peaks during startup.

We went out to the helipad and Stretch walked me through a careful preflight. With just about everything on the ship accessible from ground level, it’s easy to check it over very thoroughly.

One item that’s critical is battery location for correct C/G; when the ship is flown solo, the battery goes under the cockpit floor, and when flown dual it goes into the tailboom, with cables provided at both positions.

There’s a good deal of room in the cockpit once you’re aboard, but getting in requires a little technique as you duck in through the door. The best method seems to be to thread your inboard leg in past the cyclic, duck in, then haul the outboard one in after you.

I managed with no more effort than your typical bogged hippo getting out of a mudhole; Stretch, who lives up to his name at well over six feet, slid gracefully into the right seat before I could even see how it was done.

The standard instrument panel, including RotorWay’s trademark separate engine and rotor tachometers, goes ahead of the left rudder pedals, but many builders opt for the more conventional center instrument pedestal as on our demo ship.

Startup is a matter of flipping a few switches, verifying that the primary drive idler T-handle is pulled out, and hitting the button on top of either cyclic; the engine lit at once, and the blades began to turn immediately.

As soon as they come up to speed, the T-handle is pushed in to lock up the primary drive. Unlike most other helicopters, the Exec is started with the collective about a third of the way up; in fact, the only time it’s lowered past that point is during autorotations.

With the ship warmed up, Stretch coached me through the standard liftoff procedure for neophyte Exec pilots: Hold a little pedal, ease the cyclic until pressures are balanced, and come up slowly on the collective until the helicopter gets light on its skids and tries to turn.

Set the pedals to stop the turn and continue up with the collective until liftoff. A slight cyclic correction is necessary as the helicopter lifts into a hover, but I found it quite stable and easy to control.

There’s no question that it’s a small, light helicopter that responds immediately to changes in control pressures, but it was not nearly as twitchy as I might have thought given its small size, and control pressures are actually quite firm.

When you buy an Exec, you get an excellent package of builder and pilot training courses.

The elastomeric rotor bearings minimize feedback of one per rev forces through the controls, and throttle-collective correlation required only a minimum of throttle twisting.

Stretch made the first departure, since the new construction around the old Sky Center requires dodging among ranks of parked truck trailers, and we found some more open space to let me feel out the ship. It’s quite stable in cruise, and there’s some pitch-roll coupling requiring forward or back pressure to maintain altitude depending on the direction of turn.

The aerodynamics of the fuselage and rotor system interact such that lowering the collective tends to pitch the nose up, and raising it pulls it down, so the usual coordination exercise of accelerating and decelerating becomes somewhat superfluous.

Making a quick stop requires little more than reducing collective, keeping the nose straight with pedal, and letting pitch attitude pretty much take care of itself.

As a result of this, RotorWay’s height velocity diagram goes clear down to the ground anywhere past about 65 mph; an engine failure at that speed still leaves the pilot plenty of energy to slow up, flare, and set down.

Autorotation performance has really been improved by the asymmetric blade airfoil, so much that Stretch advocates controlling the touchdown point primarily by adjusting collective (and hence rotor speed) rather than airspeed.

With about 65 mph established in the descent, raising collective to pull the turns down to the bottom of the green reduces rate of descent to about 1300 fpm, while still allowing for a flare at the bottom to bring the speed back up.

Keeping the rotor speed at the top of the green runs the rate of descent up to about 1800 fpm. At low level, we also sampled yaw control with no pedal inputs, as would be the case in a tail rotor failure.

The ship could be slowed to not much over 20 mph and still pointed straight ahead; at that point in a real failure you’d roll off the throttle, ease back, and set down at about five mph pointed straight forward.

We returned to the Sky Center and Stretch talked me through the standard Exec approach — rather low and fast compared to other helicopters, but ending in a hover over the pad with a minimum of power change.

A minute or two of cool-down, and we shut down — following which Stretch instantly restarted the engine for a moment just to show me how readily it cranks up, hot or cold. Overall, I was quite impressed. The Exec weighs about as much, empty and loaded, as the Robinson R22, and it’s about as fast.

Altitude performance isn’t quite as good due to the higher disk loading — but let’s face it, light reciprocal helicopters aren’t ideal for hot-and-high operations in any case, and neither RotorWay nor Robinson suggest that they are. (Even so, I know of at least one RotorWay operated regularly above 6000 feet in Colorado, and Execs have flown well over 10,000.)

Is the Rotorway Helicopters Exec the only relatively low-cost way to own and operate your own helicopter? Not quite: For a similar initial investment you might find an elderly Hughes, Brantly, or Hiller more or less ready to fly.

Bear in mind, however, that these are all certificated helicopters full of life-limited parts that are very expensive at best and impossible to find at worst — and, since they’re certificated birds, you’ll have to have them worked on by certificated mechanics.

Yes, you can get into the air for less money, and right away — but it’ll catch up with you very quickly! RotorWay makes no effort to compete against certificated helicopters, new or used, for those operators who need to operate one; it’s an apples vs. oranges comparison.

If your helicopter needs are primarily for personal transportation or recreation, though, the Exec has a great deal to offer, not least of which is the fact that by the time you’re licensed in it you’ll have an extremely thorough grounding in helicopter theory, construction, and maintenance.

Besides, it must be quite a thrill to arrive somewhere in a spiffy helicopter and be able to say, when asked what kind it is, “I built it myself!”

Autorotation performance has really been improved by the asymmetric blade airfoil.

1989 EXEC GROUP DOMESTIC PRICE LIST

GROUP I-A – $3850

• B-Tool Kit

• Tail Boom Group

• C-Airframe

• Landing Gear

• Airframe Brackets

GROUP II-A – $4575

• B-Cabin

• Floor Pan

• Seats W/Black Vinyl

• C-Doors

• Windscreen

GROUP III-A – $4016

• B-Cyclic Control

• Collective Control

• Directional Control

• Engine Mount

• Water Pump

• Alternator

• Pilot/Passenger Seat Belts

• W/Shoulder Harness

• C-Tail Rotor

• Tail Rotor Drive

GROUP IV-A – $6116

• B-Main Shaft Assembly

• Elastomeric Rotor Hub

• C-Secondary Drive

• Oil Bath

GROUP V-A – $4587

• B-Fuel System

• Clutch Torque Link

• Instrument Panel/Wiring Harness

• Engine Instruments

• Rotor Tachometer

• C-Oil Cooling System

• Radiator

• Fan Shroud

• Fan Drive

• Stand Pipe & Hoses

GROUP VI-A – $4780

• B-Asymmetrical Rotor Blades

• C-Elastomeric Bearings and Thrust System

GROUP VII-A – $7776

• B-Standard Exhaust System

• Heat Shielding

• Battery

• C-RW 152/D Engine

TOTAL: $35,700

OPTIONAL EQUIPMENT

• Airframe Special: $2500

• Dual Controls: $231

• Skid Pants: $215

• Ground Wheels: $145

• Air Plenum: $80

• Carb. Temperature Gauge: $80

• Stainless Steel Exhaust: $295 or $468 if sold separately

• Luggage Compartment: $125

• Pioneer Photo Tach: $325

• Instrument Pod: $250 or $500 if sold separately

• Hi-Temp Cooling Fan: $250

CRATING CHARGES

• GROUP I-A: $95

• GROUP II-A: $125

• GROUP III-A: $60

• GROUP IV-A: $105

• GROUP V-A: $70

• GROUP VI-A: $75

• GROUP VII: $95-A

The post Rotorway Helicopters Executive Decision appeared first on Redback Aviation.

This Stylish Newcomer Seems to be Saying: Color Me Fun!

ARTICLE DATE: July 1966

If you are the kind of guy who can lay out upwards of twenty-five grand for a helicopter, you belong to a pretty exclusive club and I wish you lots of luck.

But if you’re down there in the canned beer and chopped beef bracket like this writer, the new Schramm Javelin is likely to be more your meat. This sporty little chopper, now barely hovering in prototype form, was born with more built-in sex appeal than most rotorcraft ever achieve, even in the full bloom of maturity.

The story of B. J. Schramm’s remarkably appealing sport helicopter began in 1958 when the young designer built and flew a Bensen gyrocopter. Convinced from that experiment that the only way to go was up, Schramm has been looking in a more or less vertical direction since.

LEFT: Tail rotor hub is carried on aluminum tube, and is linked to main rotor. A spur guards it from tail-low landing.
RIGHT: Spartan panel and uncluttered cockpit shown here. Temp gauge is for water cooled outboard engine in prototype.

The result is the Javelin, five hundred pounds of high-style helicopter due to start its FAA type certification program in time for approval “within one year,” according to Schramm. Production plans are unsettled at the moment, since a move to a new area is contemplated, but Schramm is talking about one-a-day production for the Javelin following certification.

Powered by the same 100-hp Continental 0-200 that pulls so many Cessna 150s around the sky, the Javelin is going to start life as a single-seater with a top speed of 74 knots. The designer expects a rate of climb at sea level of 1,200 fpm, a service ceiling of 11,500 ft and a hover ceiling of 3,500 feet outside the ground effect on a standard day.

Inside ground effect, the figure is 5,000 feet. After FAA certification as a single-seater, Schramm intends to widen the Javelin helicopter cockpit, install an extra seat and a bigger bubble canopy, and go after two-place approval.

PRIVATE PILOT’S Bob Said, in cockpit, watches designer B. J. Schramm point out changes planned for panel.

The Javelin in its present form has lifted more weight than would be involved in the second seat and its passenger, the designer noted. Beyond any question, the thing about the Javelin that attracts the most attention is the styling. This little machine simply reaches out and grabs you by the eyeballs as you walk by.

The metal work is beautifully done, and probably could not be duplicated on anybody’s production line. The cockpit is nicely air-conditioned at present, since it is open at both sides, and the strip of plexiglass in front serves as little more than a bug deflector.

Javelin Helicopter Goes Into Production

Main rotor hub was handcrafted by the designer. Patent is being sought on the special laminate in rotor blades.

Production models, however, are slated to have wrap-around canopies. The Javelin helicopter prototype was lovingly crafted, a piece at a time, by the designer himself, who took the trouble to go to machinist’s school so he could learn to do the machine work himself.

It is basically little more than a welded steel tube skeleton with some artistically designed sheet metal skin, and a length of aluminum pipe stuck on at the rear to handle the tail rotor. But then, all a Turner seascape amounts to is a piece of canvas with some paint daubed on it, and a wire to hang it up.

What Schramm has done with five hundred pounds of assorted ironmongery is hard to believe, but the accompanying photos show that the sharp little Javelin does, in fact, fly. Large Southern California television audiences have watched it do so.

Scrupulous reportorial honesty compels us to point out that the longest flight to date has been some twenty minutes, with speed not exceeding 45 mph and maximum altitude not exceeding forty feet.

Forty feet is, however, outside the ground effect, and nobody is taking bets against the Javelin going right on up when the time comes, which it soon will attempt during the certification program. One continuing problem with the prototype — and it is a problem which probably has plagued more prototypes than all other problems put together — has been engine cooling.

While the Javelin helicopter production models will have an air-cooled Continental aircraft engine, the prototype is powered by a 100-hp water-cooled outboard marine engine. This means a radiator, and the difficulty of finding a place to put it.

Late for the golf match? Prototype of Javelin sport helicopter points to a new solution for sportsmen on the go.

Schramm put it below and behind the pilot, where there would be relatively little airflow over it, because that was the only available place to put it. To provide air flow over the cooling coils, a fan was installed. At this writing a bigger radiator and a better fan are sitting in the shop awaiting installation. The air-cooled Continental will, hopefully, cure all this.

Other problems? Limited test flying hasn’t turned up any significant ones, Schramm says, but he is quick to point out that it is much too soon to make predictions. After all, the purpose of the certification testing is to discover flaws.

The designer envisions a number of utility applications for the Javelin, most of which either could or definitely would involve removal of the sporty body. For pipeline or power line patrol, utility work on farm or ranch, crop dusting, etc., the body panels can be detached from the frame members and the aircraft flown in skeletal form.

The mere mention, however, of putting the Javelin to work for her living seems almost profane. Everything about her, from concept to contours, cries out that this machine is for the playboy, not plow boy. The Javelin trails nicely, and has been towed all over the place behind a Volkswagen.

This kind of portability is mighty handy in case your back yard is cluttered with clotheslines or birdhouses, because you can winch the machine onto a trailer and head for some nearby vacant lot. (Try, however, to select one approved by the friendly FAA for helicopter operation.)

You can’t quite store the Javelin in a kitchen cupboard, but a garage will do nicely. The machine is narrow, only a hair over six feet wide, so they’ll be a good deal of room left in the average one-car garage. You won’t be able to shut the door, however, because the front rotor blade sticks out too far.

For people who fear that two robust burglars might sneak in and birdnap the Javelin helicopter bodily, Schramm has made a quick-disconnect provision which allows you to remove the rotor blade in five minutes by taking out a couple of bolts.

With the front rotor removed, the garage door will close, because the Javelin is no longer than a Lincoln Continental, to which it bears still another comparison: both of these stylish vehicles come high.

There is no use putting it off any longer: we are bound to tell you that this sexy little jewel is going to set you back in the neighborhood of ten grand. Eight to ten, says the designer, is the figure presently being jock-eyed around as the target zone for initial sales of the single-seat version. The two-seater will, it goes without saying, cost more.

Compared with a base price of under $7,000 for the Cessna 150, it makes you think. But then, with anything like the 150’s mass production unit costs could come down, Schramm points out. And compared with the basic price of any other helicopter of comparable performance on the market, the Javelin is in what Wall Street calls the buy range.

Designer, sports car and Javelin are a picture of fun and games on road. ‘Copter trails well, lives in garage.

Between $90,000 and $100,000 has been invested to date in engineering and prototype development, Schramm claims. The present design is not the first: the prototype evolved through several design stages. But once the final blueprints were drawn, Schramm says it took him just forty-five working days to build the Javelin.

The production model, for which Schramm estimates a potential market of two to three hundred per year at the target sales price, will embody certain relatively minor changes, but will be essentially the same aircraft. Improvements will include a completely enclosed canopy, and a strengthened floor plate to permit easier entry to and exit from the cockpit.

When can you buy this vest-pocket helicopter? Don’t hold your breath, for the designer says it will be at least a year before anything gets to the public. And with type certification, a move to new facilities and establishment of a production operation still to be coped with, it may take more than a year.

In addition to completed copies, Schramm says plans are being developed to market Javelin helicopter kits and components for the do-it-yourself birdman.

The post The Sharp Little Javelin Helicopter appeared first on Redback Aviation.

ROTORWAY FORCED INTO BANKRUPTCY

The combination of a failed foreign market and unforeseen local real estate reversals drives helicopter company into Chapter Seven

It was another one of those bad news days. Early this morning, I received a call from B.J. Schramm, the head of Rotor way, the veteran aviation company which has been serving the flying public for 25 years. Mr. Schramm said he was calling me himself because he wanted to be sure I knew the truth about the demise of their company, not just hear rumors from other sources.

It was a very sad, but not unexpected story: B.J. Schramm had started Rotorway the hard way, working long hours to design and produce his helicopters for very small return, but always turning out the very best quality rotorcraft which could be built, made of the finest available materials. And the price of the helicopter was always kept as affordable as possible so that many pilots could enjoy it.

Even though they never made a great deal of money by selling their helicopters, the company had purchased a small amount of property, and they’d kept afloat for many years by the escalation of real estate values in the Phoenix Arizona area where they were situated.

During this period, there had been a short time when the company had managed to turn a fair profit; only to have it siphoned off by the lawyers they hired to defend them in a lawsuit.

B.J. went on to tell me that it was a combination of unfortunate events which brought down the company. After years of rising property values in the Phoenix area, the real estate market suddenly softened and leveled off, causing many area banks to feel the pinch.

Many improvement loans had been granted to Rotorway over the years, on the basis of the escalated value of their property, and the company had expanded their operations several times in this way, so Rotorway was heavily in debt.

They were not without orders, however, because 12 new helicopters had been ordered by a company in Brazil, and the people at Rotorway had devoted their complete production to completing that order.

Because they had already accepted the large Brazilian order, Rotorway told their domestic customers that their orders would be postponed until the helicopters for their current order had been built. When elections were held in Brazil and a new president was elected, nobody thought anything of it, and production at Rotorway continued unabated.

Then B.J. received a notice from South America that the newly-elected president of Brazil had ordered all foreign imports to be stopped, effective immediately. The Brazilian company which had ordered the twelve helicopters was unable to accept or pay for them, and canceled the order.

Rotorway then turned to its domestic customers, but evidently they had tired of waiting, and canceled their orders as well. Rotorway was left with no money to meet the bank loan payments, and cash flow quickly dried up.

One of the other factors which contributed to Rotorway’s problem occurred in 1988, when the company moved to a new building costing over one million dollars, which they financed with a loan from one of the banks.

Another was the cost of updating the design for the new Elete which was funded from an additional half-million-dollar loan. Expenses from its expanded operations soared as well, and B.J. Schramm searched for ways to continue.

For the next few months, he made a valiant effort to attract outside investors to help save the company. Some were found, but because of the widespread fear of product liability, they all declined to participate, and prospects became dimmer yet.

At that time, there were $250,000-worth of pre-paid orders in house, and Mr. Schramm told me that for awhile, he and a few loyal craftsmen worked day and night in the factory, turning out the product. He was proud to tell me that over 95 percent of those orders had been shipped. Rotorway finally defaulted on its bank loans, and the bank foreclosed on their property.

On a potentially hopeful note, papers on the loans were sold to a third party who says he Will attempt to salvage the product line, and some Rotorway employees have been retained by the new owner. And so, yet another aviation firm has been forced to go to the bankruptcy courts toplead for relief of loans and debts which were impossible to pay off in today’s economy.

Because of B.J. Schramm’s reputation for honesty and integrity during the 25 years he was in business at Rotorway, we know he’ll be back. He may return with another company, or he may be working for somebody else, but anyone with a love of aviation and a genius for design such as B.J. Schramm possesses cannot stay away from flying for very long.

Let’s just hope that his brainchild, the Rotorway Executive, and his other excellent design, the new Rotorway Elete, will also continue to be available to helicopter enthusiasts for many years to come.

The post Rotorway Helicopters – The Dark Years appeared first on Redback Aviation.

COURTESY: KiwiFlyer Magazine

Magazine of the New Zealand Aviation Community

SOURCE: Issue 50 – 2017 #1

SUBSCRIBE: http://www.kiwiflyer.co.nz/

CREDITS: Michael Norton – Editor | Publisher KiwiFlyer Magazine

Flight Review

There’s a new, NZ, version of the Safari helicopter about town. And it’s much nicer to fly. About three years ago, KiwiFlyer sampled the previous edition of Bruce Belfield’s home-built Safari helicopter for a feature article in Issue 33.

For a variety of reasons, supported by second and third opinions, we concluded it was probably the pick of the rotary home-builts available in the recreational aviation market. If there was a niggle at that time, it was our perception of a heavy control feel – which we likened to an R44 with the hydraulics off.

You adjusted to it after a while, but the initial flight for pilots current in certified light helicopters would probably involve a degree of over-controlling in response to the friction and feedback present within the Safari’s systems of then. And now? Very much better.

That’s not just KiwiFlyer’s view after a brief sortie around Bruce’s patch at Te Awamutu either. Other CPLs who have tried the new version concur.

There are 12 CHR Safari helicopters on the New Zealand register. Produced as a kit-set by Florida company CHR International, the Safari has the outward appearance of a scaled down Bell 47. Indeed when first developed by Canadian Home Rotors, the aircraft was named the Baby Belle.

It was later changed to Safari and subsequently in 2009 CHR International acquired the business and moved it to Florida. Testament to the design of the Safari is the number of hours commonly flown on them. Several of the New Zealand examples have many hundreds of hours on their HOBBS.

All too often home-built helicopters change hands with very few hours on the clock, in main due to their owner/builders discovering that flying them wasn’t quite the good experience they were expecting.

LEFT: Brand new Safari 400 being test flown by Bruce.
RIGHT: Main rotor blades are composite, made in the US.

That’s not the case with the Safari helicopter, whose owners frequently talk of adventures into mountains and bush on hunting, fishing and holiday trips. One of the confidence inspiring aspects of the Safari is its rugged and traditional design.

The helicopter air frame is of welded steel, the engine is a Lycoming, and everything is on show for inspection. There’s also plenty of room for two people in the cabin, a decent useful load and good power reserves.

Bruce Belfield became a distributor for the helicopter company after acquiring his kit in 1998, forming South Pacific Home Rotors in 2002. A fitter/turner and machinist by trade, his skills were a perfect match for the amateur-built aircraft category the Safari fits in to.

Those skills have also been put to good use for subsequent owner/builders with numerous improvements to the design originating from Bruce’s workshop and now distributed to owners around the world as well as the United States factory.

Safari 600 Specifications and Performance

Powered by a Lycoming O-360, the standard factory Safari 400 will cruise at 74kts, with a VNE of 87kts or 100mph. A typical ship weighs around 1000lbs empty and with a MAUW of 1650lbs, useful load is in the order of 650lbs. Climb performance is 1000 feet per minute to a ceiling of 10,000 feet.

The twin fuel tanks hold a total of 106 liters. IGE hover limits are quoted as 7000 feet and OGE as 5000 feet. The 26ft diameter main rotor is of composite construction and the tail rotor with a 4 foot diameter is made from strong and light weight titanium.

South Pacific Home Rotors

Bruce Belfield’s original Safari 400 was the first-of-type to fly in New Zealand, back in the year 2000 when it also deservedly gathered up several home-building awards from the local sport aviation scene.

Over the years since, Bruce has worked extensively to support other builders in New Zealand as well as to make numerous improvements to the helicopter’s design and flight characteristics, several of which have been incorporated by the factory into their standard kit – one example being titanium tail rotor blades.

LEFT: Everywhere you look, craftsmanship is outstanding.
RIGHT: Proud new owner Colin Wade, with Bruce.

Another improvement first fitted to the helicopter by Bruce and then adopted by the factory has been an electronic governor system. Yet another is his Kiwi-Pod luggage system.

Now his latest personal Safari incorporates so many ‘Bruce version’ improvements that it has become a step change from the standard factory offering. Bruce has thus unofficially ‘named’ it the Safari 600. More on that later.

Throughout the course of his work on the Safari, Bruce has acquired an international reputation as the go-to person for ‘setting up’ the helicopter. In that regard he’s recently returned from a few weeks in Costa Rica working for an owner there, and he often travels to Australia to support owners in Sydney.

Several of Bruce’s ‘enhancements’ are in regular demand by other new and existing owners throughout the world, his exhaust and inlet manifold systems being a common example.Bruce has also regularly attended Oshkosh and Sun & Fun as a guest of the factory to meet prospective customers and act as a factory demonstration pilot for them.

Safari 600 Helicopter Kit Options

The Safari helicopter kit fits into the amateur-built category, so if you do take the option to build it yourself from a basic kit, the 51% rule means that you can also maintain it yourself afterwards.

The most popular option in Australasia is the ‘Down Under’ Starter Kit, comprising a majority of the basic components, but leaving it to the owner to sort their own engine, cabin fit-out and instruments.

In the kit are: Fabricated cabin frame and tail boom, tail rotor driveshaft, fuel tanks, basic control package, engine/rotor tachometer, rotor head and blades, main transmission, a conversion kit to mount the aircraft certified engine vertically, and tail rotor assembly and blades.

The next option up is the Safari 400 kit which includes the O-360 engine, shroud and exhaust, welded fuselage with sheet metal installed, powder coated frame and mounted bubble, leather seats and carpet, instruments and pod, governor, trim and frictions, and all the necessary small parts and raw materials to complete your aircraft.

A ready-to fly option is also available which Bruce can build for you at his Te Awamutu base, where he has support available from Central Aero Engineering at Hamilton for any engineering supervision required.

Bruce says that most of his New Zealand customers typically acquire a starter kit including frame and bubble. Then they source the engine and instruments from a timed-out R22 (or a wrecked one). Although the fabrication required to complete a kit is all uncomplicated, there is a lot of it to do.

No welding is required in the Down Under kit. Bruce also says that all parts supplied are very accurately produced and fit together as they should, thanks to extensive investment in jigging and CNC production at the factory.

He says that an honest assessment of the time required to complete a Down Under kit is 1000 hours, this including the ‘thinking’ time and being easily achievable by a builder with basic skills.Any parts can be requested ready-made from the factory or via Bruce and he says there is a long list of options to make the job easier if desired.

New Zealand customers of course have a major advantage to hand in that Bruce is here with a demonstration aircraft, a wealth of hands-on experience for building, setting up, and flying the type, and the capability to assist the build process from start to finish.

The Safari 600

Bruce’s latest edition of the Safari helicopter build is not an official factory version, but if customers wish then he can fabricate the same modifications for their aircraft.

In addition to the list of ‘Bruce’ improvements that have become standard (or nearly so) Safari fitment, the ‘600’ has an extensively reworked control system. Working closely with Paul Waterhouse at Central Aero Engineering, Bruce has made numerous small changes that together accrue towards making flying the aircraft an altogether better experience.

Paul currently maintains five Safaris on behalf of their owners and says, “it wasn’t a secret that the control characteristics haven’t been perfect. The cyclic and collective forces were quite heavy and prone to leading new Safari pilots towards over-controlling.”

Paul and Bruce did “a lot of analysis and staring at other two-bladed rotor heads,” an exercise that culminated in changes to pitch link arm alignment and various other components – particularly also with a view to managing friction in the control system. In Paul’s words, “it’s pretty close to right now”.

Paul also says, “I’ve got no hesitation at all to fly in one.” Paul’s latter statement is qualified by him adding that there are very few home-built helicopters that achieve an acceptable standard for him to fly in.

Other design changes include canting the main rotor transmission forward slightly, an all-titanium tailboom – for strength and weight savings, new pedal linkages which are more positive in action, a widening of the internal frame leading to more cabin room, angling the cabin floor to be flat at cruise speed, a transmission oil cooler which now provides for an indefinite hover time, and a new collective actuator system which operates in descent at <18” MAP to help prevent the collective wanting to rise (a previous Safari niggle).

Compared to the standard model, the Safari 600 is 50 lb lighter. Bruce says that one-up, it climbs easily at 1200 fpm.

Flight Experience

As well as a brief fly of the Safari 600 ourselves, KiwiFlyer also spoke with local commercial pilot Nick Lane (4 years and approaching 1000 hours on his CPL), who is familiar with both the Safari 400 and new 600 versions.

A pre-flight is straight forward, with virtually everything you might want to inspect being clearly on show right in front of you. Climbing aboard is equally straight forward so long as you remember to put your head in the bubble and follow with your body – it simply won’t work the other way around unless you’re less than four feet tall.

Seats are very comfortable, there’s a heap of elbow room, and leg room is equally generous. I’m a touch over 6 foot and have always found the pedal position in Robinson R22s or Hughes H300s right on my comfort limit – and occasionally beyond it, resulting in cramping muscles which aren’t conducive to hovering a helicopter in a gusty crosswind. Not so in the Safari.

Bruce’s floor and pedal modifications suited me very well.Checks are all standard practice and the venerable Lycoming roars into life. As an aside I did also observe Bruce flying from the ground – and this is a noticeably quiet helicopter.

The noise footprint is unlikely to ever bother neighbors.Bruce flew a circuit to reacquaint me, then it was my turn. Three years ago, that was a bit of a humbling experience and I’ll admit it took me the best part of an hour to get to grips with the aircraft.

The difference this time was significant. In the same way that others who have flown the ‘600’ have found, a few minutes was enough. That’s mainly because the controls are much lighter and better balanced now. It’s a lot more like flying an R22 than previously.

Vibration levels and stick shake all seemed low too, suggesting a well ‘sorted’ machine. We depart for a local scenic and I also notice how much nicer the aircraft feels to just ‘fly around in’.

Bruce says that’s due to the helicopter mast adjustments and also in part to his tilted floor. Flying ‘on the numbers’ is easy and in the light breeze we’re flying in, Bruce can readily trim the helicopter for hands-off flight if he wishes.

Confirming my perceptions in a later discussion, Nick Lane observed that it ‘wants’ to fly at 60 kts now instead of 40 kts previously whereupon it always felt like you were forcing it to go faster.

Nick says in his view the controls are “much improved” and although, like many aircraft it has its idiosyncrasies, “once you’ve got a feel for it, it flies nicely.” He says to Bruce, via our discussion, “The way it is now is good. Leave it alone.”

In Nick’s view, and mine, someone with R22 experience and Robinson Safety Course currency, would transition to the Safari 600 quite well. Being in the experimental category, pilots require a PPL(H) to fly the Safari.

Most owners either have a license or acquire one in an R22 whilst building their aircraft. However Bruce says that pending a willing Flight Examiner (currently in the pipeline), it will be possible to undertake all one’s training in the Safari if desired.

For more information on this kit helicopter

One final testament to these aircraft, worthy of mention, is that full-cover insurance is now available with a reasonable excess and premium equal to or better than what most R22 helicopter owners would receive.

To find out more, contact Bruce Belfield at South Pacific Home Rotors on 027 696 5159 or 07 871 5699, by email: brucenik@xtra.co.nz or visit www.safarinz.com

The factory website is www.safarihelicopter.com

New owner profile: Colin Wade

Our visit to Te Awamutu coincided with an opportunity to meet new Safari owner Colin Wade, who was enjoying some time in his brand new helicopter with Bruce. A Cirrus SR20 owner/pilot, Colin is yet to commence his PPL(H) and plans to use the Safari for his training. We asked Colin about the motivation behind his new acquisition.

It was quickly obvious he is a passionate aviator, first flying with Max Clear and Bantams at Te Kowhai, before stepping up to a Sky Arrow, then Pioneer 300 and then a PPL in his Cirrus which he regularly flies between Te Kowhai, Pauanui and Great Barrier.

Colin has long been an aviation enthusiast and this year will attend Oshkosh for the 15th time, traveling (as always) on a Gaye Pardy tour which he and wife Sue have often helped run for Gaye.

It was at Oshkosh that Colin first met Bruce (when he was demonstrating the factory machine there). Colin says he went for a couple of flights and was hooked, telling Bruce to call him when he got home.

Bruce later landed his Safari at Colin’s front door and the deal was done, with Colin observing that Bruce’s workmanship was exceptionally good and confidence inspiring (KiwiFlyer agrees). Colin’s aircraft has been built up by Bruce and Colin over the last 18 months and has just had the mandatory 40 hours of test flying finished off by Bruce.

Colin says the Safari suited him very well with its manageable maintenance costs, decent useful load and power in reserve, and that he’s looking forward to a lot of local flying and being able to drop in on rural friends.

Congratulations on the aircraft Colin. It looks outstanding.

LEFT: All Safaris are fitted with NZ made titanium blades.
MIDDLE: Bruce is experimenting with the adjustable airfoil.
RIGHT: Very nicely designed and fabricated panel.

The post Safari 600: A well-proven helicopter to build yourself appeared first on Redback Aviation.

For several years Eric enjoyed the new found freedom of being able to fly his own helicopter throughout the Ozarks of Missouri. He followed safe-flying procedures by always keeping an emergency landing area within the autorotation range of his helicopter.

On one particular afternoon he departed work, where he was allowed to hangar his helicopter, to fly to his parents’ lakeside lodge on Table Rock Lake near Branson, Missouri. As was his custom, he fueled his RotorWay Exec 90 with auto fuel containing 10% ethanol.

The flight proceeded without problems for the first half of the cross-country when he noticed that the engine began loosing power and running erratically. Eric immediately entered an autorotation and guided his helicopter toward a small open field that he had designated as one of his many emergency landing zones along his route.

During the autorotation the engine completely died and Eric performed a perfect power-off landing with no damage to his helicopter. The landing spot was in an area with cell phone coverage so he was able to make a few calls and arrange for some help to extricate his helicopter and return it to his home.

Once Eric had his helicopter back home he determined that the engine was not getting enough fuel to operate. He removed the bowl from the carburetor and found that it was completely full of a whitish colored gel instead of gasoline. Ethanol has an affinity for water and absorbs any water that comes into contact with the fuel.

This water can be in the form of humidity in the air or water condensation on the inside of the fuel tanks or fuel transfer containers. Over a period of time the ethanol present in the fuel that Eric filled his helicopter with began absorbing moisture and the resultant gel stayed in the bottom of the carburetor bowl.

As more ethanol mixed with more water in the environment, the carburetor bowl filled with more and more gel until there was no longer enough room for the gasoline to flow through the carburetor to fuel the engine. When that condition was reached, during that last flight, the engine finally was unable to continue running and the only option was an autorotation to the ground.

Eric now only burns 100 low lead aviation fuel in his RotorWay engine. He is not willing to risk another fuel contamination episode in his helicopter. The second fuel contamination incident happened very recently. Andrew Burr built a beautiful RotorWay 162F named Frankenstein that is powered by his new VPS engine.

I personally performed all of the test flight hours in this helicopter and found the engine always running perfectly with an abundance of reserve power. Once all of the engine testing was completed and Andrew had built another five VPS engines for his beta testers to fly in their own RotorWay helicopters, Andrew sold his Frankenstein ship to a fellow in Alabama.

This new owner knew he needed to lose at least 50 pounds of weight before he would be legal to fly his new RotorWay. After months of trying he decided that it would be easier to just sell the helicopter than stay on the rigorous diet. He quickly found a buyer and the deal was completed.

He hired an instructor with experience in RotorWays and began his flight training. The training was proceeding along well and a cross country flight was planned. The new owner was using a fifty five gallon drum with an electric fuel pump to transfer fuel into the helicopter between flights. Following fueling the helicopter, the cross country training flight was initiated.

About half way to their destination the engine began to loose power and the flight instructor took control of the helicopter and completed an autorotation to the surface. The helicopter was transported back to Andrew Burr for rebuilding. With the owner present, Andrew removed and cut open the fuel filter to determine the cause of the engine stoppage.

When he removed the element from the fuel filter he found that the membrane was totally plugged with debris. He asked the new owner about the fueling technique that was used each time the helicopter was fueled. The new owner told Andrew that they had used a 55 gallon drum containing the gasoline. The fuel was then pumped from the drum into the helicopter.

Andrew asked if there was a filter installed on the fueling apparatus. The answer was NO. There was a meter for determining the amount of fuel that was transferred, but there was no filter in the system. The conclusion was debris that was in the old fuel drum was sucked up by the pump and transferred into the helicopter fuel tanks.

This debris then found its way into the helicopter’s inline fuel filter where it began clogging the filtration medium. Once the filter was clogged with enough debris to restrict the fuel flow to a level below that needed for power operation, the engine lost power.

It is imperative that the fuel that is placed into your helicopter is clean and of the correct composition to prevent a repeat of either of these true stories. It is my hope that by sharing these events someone may avoid losing their helicopter to a similar fuel related event.

Editor’s Note: If you are not sure of the purity of your past fuel, be sure to check your carburetor and/or your fuel filter. Then contact your fuel company or source. Fly safe, Orv Neisingh

Orv Neisingh: Rotorcraft Commercial, CFI, Inst., A&P orv@flywithorv.com http://www.flywithorv.com orv@vphelo.com http://www.vphelo.com 417-464-9999cell, 417-255-2203 home.

The post RotorWay Exec 90 Fuel Contamination appeared first on Redback Aviation.

COURTESY: Kitplanes – November 26, 2004

ARTICLE DATE: KITPLANES Magazine, March 1997 by Jeff Dunham

Part 1 of 8: How I got into this

It was the spring of 1986, just a few months before I graduated from Baylor University in Waco, Texas. Somehow after seeing a 1-inch ad in the back of Popular Mechanics and getting hooked on what seemed like a really cool idea, I skipped classes for the day, took a quick Southwest Airlines flight from Austin to Phoenix, and was now sitting on a RotorWay pad in a little two-seat helicopter that had, in huge letters, the word experimental stenciled on it.

The Ride

Some guy named “Stretch” was rambling through a well-rehearsed speech, extolling his company’s flying home-made contraption, and I just sat there wondering if I’d left anything in my apartment that would make my mother ashamed of me when she and Dad gathered my things after I’d been killed in a helicopter crash in Arizona. I’d been in a couple of Jet Rangers on 10-minute tour flights in New York City and had messed with radio controlled helicopters for a while. But nothing like this.

The factory tour was impressive and all the people were very nice, but what the hell was I thinking? Look at the warning placard right in front of me! “this aircraft is amateur built and does not comply with federal safety regulations for standard aircraft.” I’m a complete idiot. Should I get out before this guy starts this thing? A fire could engulf us before I even got my seat belt off.

LEFT: ENGINE INCLUDED – The 162F powerplant features 150hp, 162 cubic inches, four cylinders, four-stroke, liquid cooling, dual electronic ignition, electronic fuel injection, and the FADEC (fulley automated digital electronic control) system.
RIGHT: Small kit parts are bubble-wraped for easy identification and inventory.

Stretch finished what he was talking about and cranked the engine. Hmmm. It runs pretty smooth, I thought to myself. After warmup, we were in a hover. Oh! This is kind of cool. He then let me take the stick and try a hover. Very cool. I guess Stretch isn’t ready to die yet either, so maybe this won’t be so bad, I thought. Then he eased the cyclic forward, the nose dipped, and the ground began to melt away.

It was like I was a kid and had just jumped off the high-dive for the first time. I’d been in a two-seater airplane, but on takeoff you couldn’t see diddle ’cause the plane’s nose was high in the air. This was exactly the opposite. With our nose pitched down at 70 mph climbing at 800 fpm, the sensation of flying in this size aircraft with God’s panoramic view of the desert made me realize that this was flying the way it was meant to be.

This was what man had dreamed of for eons. And here I was, within the first generation of people who could actually achieve vertical flight. I’ll never forget the feelings and sensations that first afternoon. “I see the powerline in front of us,” Stretch said. I guess that was to brag that he didn’t need glasses – but as it turns out, powerlines are enemy number one!

Quick Moves

The feelings didn’t go away. I went back home, watched the promotional video tape some more, studied the helicopter’s building plans, and for only a few days debated whether I should spend that much dough on a hobby. But when I finally decided to go through with it, I drove by my bank three times before I actually went in and wired the money to RotorWay. Eight months later I did my first solo autorotation in a RotorWay Exec that I had built all by myself. Very very cool….

Fast Forward

So what’s up a decade later? I consider Stretch to be a good friend, and RotorWay has continued to progress after going through a couple of shake-ups and an ownership change. Founding visionary B.J. Schramm’s machine has evolved from the Javelin, to the Scorpion and Scorpion Too to the Exec and Exec 90, and now finally, to the Exec 162F.

Changes and improvements have made the 162F the most advanced piston powered machine on the market. This engine boasts 150 hp, 162 cubic inches, four cylinders, four-stroke, liquid-cooled, dual electronic ignition, electronic fuel injection, and the FADEC (fully automated digital electronic control) system, which monitors and controls all engine systems with two fully redundant and independent sets of electronics.

Like previous Rotorway helicopters, the 162F kit comes with everything needed to get it into the air except gas, oil and paint.

With a fully articulated elastomeric rotor hub that reduces vibrations, a wider and more spacious cabin than the Exec or the Exec 90, a lighter and more effective cooling system, the cabin comfort package (heating and cooling), removable doors, dual controls, a 95-mph cruising speed and 180-mile range, this helicopter is no puttering homebuilt.

Doing it Again

I have been a devout RotorWay customer and fan for more than 10 years now, regularly flying the heck out of two RotorWay ships, having also built an Exec 90 not long after its release in 1990. Because of the two helicopters, I’ve spent a lot of enjoyable and educational time at the shop and in the air. And now with the accolades of the 162F, I can’t stand the hype any longer.

With this article, we begin a series on the construction and flying of the RotorWay 162F. I’ll take you through RotorWay’s entire program, all the way from ordering the promo package, to building the machine, to flight school at RotorWay, to flying the ship once we get her rigged and ready to go. Also along the way, we’ll include input from a second builder, Mike Sherick, who has just finished construction of his own 162F.

When he is finished, the author expects his current and third homebuilt project – a Rotorway 162F – to look like this.

He’ll give us first impressions of RotorWay and his experiences, and I’ll be able to view things from a veteran’s point of view. You’ll see pictures of both our ships throughout construction, and at the conclusion of these five or so articles, if all goes well, we’ll include air-to-air shots of and from both helicopters.

The Company

Before we pull out the tools, however, let’s do a quick overview of RotorWay. The original company, RotorWay Aircraft, was formed by B.J. Schramm, a designer, inventor and true visionary of vertical flight. He began selling kit helicopters in the late ’60s and piloted a slow yet very successful evolution of design that finally resulted in the fourth generation, much-acclaimed Exec helicopter.

It was first offered in 1983 and began the building and flying careers of many helicopter enthusiasts. In the late ’80s after insurmountable financial trouble, Schramm was forced out of business, and following a few weeks of minor panic from customers with half-built helicopters, the assets of RotorWay Aircraft were purchased from the bank by Englishman John Netherwood.

Our new hero moved himself and his family to the Colonies and formed the current RotorWay International. After rehiring most of the old RotorWay employees, he and his team redesigned the Exec. Since RotorWay employees could build and fabricate most of the components and parts in house, they could easily change the existing product.

They improved the engine with beef-ups and tweaks here and there, including a dual electronic ignition rather than the single distributor. Among other minor changes, they built a larger and taller main shaft for the helicopter; a stronger and better looking landing gear; and a cleaner, faster, and more gorgeous body.

They debuted the new machine at Oshkosh 1990, dubbing it the Exec 90 kit helicopter. Then at Oshkosh ’94, RotorWay International introduced the current 162F with even more improvements, which we’ll talk about in detail throughout these articles. For the past five years, despite a sagging world economy, RWI has consistently produced an average of two kits per week, and the company continues to update and improve its product through extensive design and flight testing.

Before most folks plunk down thousands of dollars for a kit, a smart move is to get a feel for the chosen company. Do you get more for your money than just a pile of parts that are supposed to fly when assembled? Will the company answer questions right away, and are replacement parts readily available? Do I have to be an aircraft engineer to interpret the instructions and build this thing? From recent personal experience, I can tell you that regarding RWI, the answers to each of these questions are confidence-building.

From RotorWay you get much more than parts. These kits are made to fly, and RotorWay wants you to get into the sky in the easiest and safest manner possible. Thanks to new, highly detailed building instructions, rarely should builders have questions. However, Customer Service guys at RotorWay are near the phone ready to help.

Stretch is now RotorWay’s president, as well as being the in-house FAA examiner. So besides making corporate business decisions, he continues to maintain hands-on experience working in helicopter development, giving flight demos and class instruction, and he still answers the ever-important phone-in builder questions.

Another guy who has been there for more than a decade is Tom Smith. I couldn’t have built either of my machines without his and Stretch’s phone help, and to this day I’m still amazed at their knowledge and patience answering highly technical and intuitive engineering and aviation questions as well as some pretty idiotic queries.

From my experience, they usually take calls immediately, or return them within a few minutes during regular business hours. And if you screw something up, new parts are usually out the door within a day or two. As for building instructions and the way the kit is organized, this in my opinion is where RotorWay shines brighter than just about any kit manufacturer in the world.

The 162F Kit

One of the most impressive aspects about RWI as a company is its attention to detail. When building the Exec 90, I lost count of how many people walked into the hangar and were amazed with the packaging of the kit. Most important: It’s all there. Builders of most fixed-wing kits know that they must plan on spending double or even triple the cost of the initial purchase to get the craft to fly–due mostly to the extra cost of the engine, propeller, avionics and instruments. Not so with RotorWay helicopter kits.

You get everything from a fully built, ready-to-bolt-in, dynamometer-run and calibrated engine, down to the rubber trim for the skid pants. RWI even supplies items like Loc-Tite and Clecos with Cleco pliers, and all flight instruments including airspeed, altimeter, vertical speed and the compass.

And, for a competitive price, RWI offers an optional avionics package that includes a radio, transponder, encoder, intercom and headsets. The only things missing to get your ship in the air are paint and a few hundred hours of building time. Speaking of options, there are very few. If you want to spray crops, land on water, or carry too much luggage, these are extra kits.

But for the typical flying ship, there’s really nothing left to decide. The Quick Kit version used to be an option, but no longer. Some pretty major stuff is now finished for you. For $60,850USD, you get all components and parts including a fully built tail boom, main blades finished and ready to paint and balance, a complete wiring harness ready to hook up, rotor hub ready to fly, all metal subassemblies final welded, horizontal and vertical stabs, and tailrotor blades ready for end caps and mounting, as well as a fully welded airframe right off the RotorWay jig. There is no longer any welding to be done by the builder.

All fiberglass parts are already laid up with a nice gelcoat ready for final trimming and finishing. You do very little gooey work! RotorWay claims 300 hours total building time with the current 162F helicopter kit, but I question that. I built the Exec 90 helicopter (with no Quick Kit option) in 650 hours, and that was with prior experience. So I’ll keep a log on this one and we’ll also talk with Mike along the way to find out his actual hours.

As you can see in a picture, the packaging of the kit is flawless. Literally every little part down to each nut and washer is organized. Each step of the kit has its own series of numbers that correspond to parts and its own set of instructions within the manual.

For example, each part of the airframe has a painted part number that corresponds to the numbers on the large blueprint drawings of the frame assembly. To assemble these large parts, you must of course use small parts such as bolts and washers. So the airframe assembly includes three vacuum-packed cards with each of the airframe’s nuts, bolts, washers and unique parts hermetically sealed on these cards.

Within each part card under the transparent plastic, there is also a printed picture of every item, and everything has its own part number. It would be obvious if something was missing because there would be a picture but no part! Once you see one of these kits, its packaging, and its instructions, you’ll have a very high standard to judge by. Very few kits–either fixed-wing or rotorcraft–match the Exec 162F package.

Paperwork

The instructions are three highly detailed loose leaf notebooks along with full-size building prints, and they take you step by step through each assembly, making you concentrate only on the task at hand. The 162F helicopter is a perfect example of something being just the sum of its parts. If you look at this helicopter as a step-by-step procedure, anyone with a hint of mechanical ability can build one. Heck, when I started my first Exec, I got the engine and couldn’t even point to the carburetor. Ask Tom and Stretch. I’m sure they used to dread my phone calls.

Devotion to Duty

Despite all of these accolades, however, I must point out that this is an endeavor that requires great dedication. In fact, full focused obsession wouldn’t hurt either. This is not a kit you can throw together in a few weekends and hope to be flying after the final turn of a wrench. Inherently, rotorcraft are for the guys who like to tweak, and the Exec 162F will be no different.

There are a couple of areas in construction where one can fudge the tolerances a little, but for the most part, your opportunities to say “Close enough!” are very few. And if you’re expecting to fly an easy 300 hours a year in this craft without much maintenance, forget about it. For safety’s sake, thorough preflight and postflight checks are mandatory. The machine is only as good and as safe as its builder/pilot-in-command.

Obviously a correctly and well-built by-the-book craft will perform and last longer than a slapped-together piece of junk where the word experimental is an understatement. Apathy combined with a “Hell, it was fine 2 hours ago!” attitude can be a killer. The safety record for this aircraft is excellent, and this machine has the potential to be nothing but pure fun.

But just like any helicopter, if something comes out of adjustment and is ignored, or if a key item isn’t maintained correctly, the results can be fatal. RotorWay’s maintenance manuals are excellent, and when followed correctly, they are well within commercial standards in regard to replacing parts long before fatigue or failure. So keep in mind that this is a homebuilt helicopter, and you have to enjoy turning a wrench just as much as you do buzzing a farm house. The two go hand in hand.

Go to Phoenix, Young Man

This brings up the last subject for this issue: Where does a guy learn how to do maintenance on the Exec 162F, much less fly the thing!? That gets to one of the best adventures in this whole endeavor! After you’re about 90% finished with your kit helicopter and before you mount the blades or fire it up, you head out to Phoenix and the RotorWay flight and maintenance school for a week of boot camp.

There you are treated to daily class instruction on how to set up, final rig and maintain these mechanical beasts. You also get 1.5 hours a day of flight instruction from one of RotorWay’s CFIs. Obviously 7.5 hours of instruction is not enough flight time to learn to fly, but for about 98% of RotorWay students, it’s enough for the all-important level of being a confident hoverer!

I started the school at RotorWay with absolutely no experience in general aviation as pilot or a passenger. I took a ride in a Bell 47 at the State Fair of Texas when I was four, but other than that, I couldn’t tell a Cessna from a Pitts or a Huey from a Bensen Gyrocopter.

Was RotorWay ready for a guy like me? I did have one significant advantage over most people, although some may scoff at this: As I mentioned earlier, I had been flying radio controlled helicopters for a few years. The mechanical workings, flight characteristics and even controls were almost mirrored in a smaller scale from a full-size helicopter, so helicopter knowledge, theory, and a little piloting skill were burned into my brain.

The author heads for the hills in his No. 2 RotorWay. He expects the new 162F he is building to be even better.

In fact, I might have known a little too much. From many a crunched model I knew what kind of disaster could instantly happen from one loose bolt or a miscalculated control input. And I still wanted to fly in one myself? Mom and Dad probably kick themselves for taking me to the fair that day.

At the first week of school I was fairly nervous. Here I’d spent a huge chunk of money buying this dumb kit, I’d spent hours upon hours building it, and I still didn’t know if I had what it took to fly one! But by Friday after 7.5 hours of putting my instructor through a boring painful hell, I was able to keep the ship a couple of feet off the ground and in one spot–or maybe two spots.

When you reach this point, you’re sent away with an endorsement in your logbook for Hover Only. You go home, final rig your own ship, and begin to flight test and hover. The student is encouraged to hover, hover, hover and get good at it before heading back to Arizona for Phase II.

The average hover-only pilot clocks somewhere around 25 to 30 hours before going back to Mecca. That may sound like a long time, but it’s the safest thing to do. Think about it: You’re a student and you’re a test pilot. If this is your first dealing with rotorcraft, you don’t have much experience in either area.

So while you’re improving your hovering skills, you’re also testing out your new helicopter and breaking it in. But you’re doing it from only a few inches off the ground! Can you test fly a fixed-wing at zero airspeed, 12 inches in the air.

Phase II

Once you get the hover thing down, it’s back to Arizona for a week of climb-outs, forward flight, approaches, autorotations and emergency procedure training. Sound tough? Nope. If a guy can hover, he can do all the other stuff, and the view is better. (Most pilots claim that hovering is the most difficult skill in chopper flying.)

At the end of that week, you’re given another endorsement for all of the above. So far you have 15 hours of instruction. You need 5 more for check ride sign off, and this can be obtained during the third week at RotorWay with a company CFI prior to your final check ride. We’ll save details on this for later articles.

Come Back for More

I guess that’s enough for one issue. I hope that with this series we’ll grab some curious readers and maybe pique some untapped interest in experimental aircraft. Even if you have no desire to build a helicopter, I think you’ll find it a fascinating progression to see us start with boxes of parts and end up doing practice autorotations and air-to-air photography in the Southern California mountains!

The expression “as seen on TV” applies to author Jeff Dunham, who is currently the country’s premiere comedian/ventriloquist.

For the past few years he has been on a tour of sold-out performances throughout the United States in theaters and comedy clubs.

He has been on the “Tonight Show” more than any other ventriloquist in history and has been seen on many comedy television and cable shows, including a recent episode of ABC’s “Ellen.”

His partners include Peanut, a wild purple alien-like creature; Walter, a curmudgeonly grump of an old man; and Jose Jalapeno–“on a steeeck!”

You can find out all sorts of stuff on this guy and his partners, including their tour schedule at Jeff’s website: https://www.jeffdunham.com/

The post Building a RotorWay 162F – Part 1 appeared first on Redback Aviation.

COURTESY: Stu & Kathrine Fields May 2009

In January 2009 Eagle R&D made a very important trip to South Africa. Doug Schwochert and I, Blake Estes, made the 24-hour flight to the Johannesberg area to do flight checkouts on three Helicycles.

After many emails and phone calls between the builders in South Africa and Eagle R&D, the trip was organized to kill, oooops, set up, five birds with one stone; do three checkouts, train one new check-out pilot and meet a big group of excited Helicycle builders.

The three checkouts to be done were for Raymond Fowkes, Jaques Oostheizen and Hennie Roets. Upon arrival, as specified, the three Helicycles were all hangared together and ready for action. Hennie Roets of South Africa, who had one of the Helicycles ready for checkout was also prepared to be trained as the Check Pilot for the South African area builders.

Hennie has been involved with experimental helicopters for many years. He has built and flown many types of helicopters which made him an excellent choice to represent Eagle R&D in South Africa. Hennie has a very thorough understanding of the technical side of helicopters and will be handling the fleet of Helicycles in his part of the world. There are currently 12 Helicycles in South Africa, five of which are flying.

LEFT: Doug gives last minute advise to Raymond Fowkes as he readies for his initial hover check of his new ship, while Hennie and another friend stand by.
RIGHT: Jacques Oostheizen flying his brand new ship for the first time after set up and check out.

Doug and Hennie worked side by side on Raymond’s Helicycle which was the first to be prepared for flight. All of the rigging adjustments were made, the electrical system checked out, the static balancing of the main blades was completed and the engine was fired up for the first time.

Final adjustments were made to the engine, then dynamic balancing of the tail rotor was done. The main blades and rotor hub were installed and dynamically balanced. Now she was ready to fly. Doug hovered her for an hour or so and then took it out for it’s maiden flight. It flew great. It was very smooth and performed “like a million bucks”.

Auto-rotational parameters were checked and it was ready for Raymond to fly. Crowds of peo­ple prevented Raymond from flying his Helicycle initially, but once these dissipated within the next few days he hovered it and has since reported that he has flown it around the pattern at his airfield and loves it.

Meanwhile Helicycle #2, Jaques’ machine, had received plenty of attention since Jaques and his good friend George watched every move Doug and Hennie made on Raymond’s Helicycle. So, by the time that they got to it, it was nearly perfectly adjusted. Adjustments were double checked, balancing was complete and now Jaques’ Helicycle was ready for flight.

It also flew “like a million bucks”. Jaques’ friend George flew it and loved it so much he contacted a guy in South Africa that had a Heliycle kit for sale and bought it the next day. Needless to say, George will be building aggressively on his Helicycle.

Helicycle #3 was Hennie’s own ship. Since he had been so well instructed by Doug, he had his Helicycle flying well before our two week stay was over. With a few tweaks here and there Hennie’s Helicycle was also flying “like a million bucks”.

So now we had completed our goal of getting three Helicycles checked out, training Hennie to be the South African Check Pilot and meeting the group. During the days we met a steady flow of the South African Helicycle builders and their friends. Quite a group; Anton, a constant attendant, Peter, David, Lance, Brian, Braam, Coen, Quibus, Gus, Arnold, Ugo and his boys, Vince and Erika.

We also did an interview with SA Flyer, a South African flying magazine (no longer in business). They did a very nice article on the Helicycle in the March 2009 issue. Doug and Hennie also did final balancing of “Snow White”, a Helicycle owned by Brian Roach.

LEFT: Hennie getting in more test flight time while the Eagle R & D team are there in South Africa.
RIGHT: With Chief Monkey Inspector on top of the job, Hennie Roets is sure to be spot on and a great success.

Brian had been in the process of rebuilding his Helicycle after an incident that occurred last year. It also flew for the first time in over a year while we were there. Since our trip Anton has returned his ship to operational status with the help of Hennie and his chief monkey inspector.

All in all it was a great trip and very exciting to see the strong fleet of Helicycles in South Africa. Hennie Roets will be a huge asset to Eagle R&D and the Helicycle builders in South Africa, we at Eagle R&D thank all of you for your interest and support. I am sure that BJ is proud.

Blake Estes

Eagle Research & Development

The post South African Expedition for Eagle R&D appeared first on Redback Aviation.

Rotorway Two Seat Kit Helicopter Kit

To many of us, the essence of the word “freedom” means the ability to go anywhere at virtually any time that we choose. To many more of us, that word is epitomized by what we feel as we fly from place to place; in search of adventure, en­lightenment, fun and a clear view of the rest of our world.

Airport by airport . . . but think of how wonder­ful it would be if we weren’t so de­ pendent on having a half mile or so of concrete, macadam, asphalt, etc. to land on. Now, that sounds like freedom to me!

FREEDOM! Just think of it . . . the ability to rise effortlessly and vertically from most any location, speeding along at near 100 mph in a safe and economical manner, cruising around without benefit of wings but accompanied by the healthy beat of a finely tuned rotor system.

Alighting in places so small that even the best STOL aircraft would fear the consequences of a landing … or using a flotation system to splash easily into some remote fish­ing hole or mountain lake.

This is the real freedom that is made possible by the use of a helicopter. “But wait a minute there, Jimbo. Helicopters cost, hundreds of thou­sands of dollars—right? And don’t they need lots of costly maintenance?”

“And don’t they require awesome piloting skills and expensive les­sons. . ?” Not necessarily so, rotor breath! Especially if you happen to be ac­quainted with the Rotorway Exec kit helicopter. The Exec is evidently the only realistic avenue to afford­ able helicopter ownership, available to the common man.

And please note that I am not even hazarding the serious mention of rebuilding of an older, used helicopter—take my word for it, those kinds of projects are hardly a bargain. Helicopters are voracious money eaters — with one very notable exception — that being the Lone Exec . . . the only success­ful commercially offered helicopter kit available to the rotorhead who doesn’t own (or rob) their own bank.

DIY Helicopter Kits

A KIT helicopter, though? Has this Campbell guy finally slipped his gourd . . . wouldn’t a kit heli­copter be dangerous, difficult to build, and fly real squirrelly (EVEN without Campbell flying it)? Ques­tions, questions, questions. . . .

Well kiddies; I’ve been a helicop­ter pilot for several years now (proof positive that anyone can fly an egg-beater — with a little practice!) — an experience that teaches one caution, humility, pride, and an eye for de­tail that becomes the very essence of survival. Such whirly-wipged craft are wondrous devices that offer awesome capabilities and exception­ al versatility.

But they are also re­markably subject to the whims of neglect or indifference. The easiest way to get hurt in this business is to take a nonchalant, devil-may-care attitude about helicopter flying — such will get you hurt in a hurry.

Still; properly flown and maintained, these devices are some of the most challenging and enjoyable beasts of burden that I have ever flown and their appeal (to me) bor­ders on the fanatical. I love flying helicopters — even though every part of these damned things seems to be trying to tear itself limb from limb (while doing the same to its occu­pants).

I have never learned more, or had nearly as much demanded from me, as I have had while flying helicopters. It is an esoteric and elite pursuit. Be that as it may, the concept of a homebuilt kit helicopter did indeed tend to make me look askance and shake my head with portents of dread for those erstwhile fools that might attempt such a foreboding assignment.

Such a complex and intricate piece of machinery was not the kind of thing that I would think should be trusted to amateurs. . . . I’ve changed my mind, though. Enter B. J. Schramm and the Rotorway Exec — the only feasible, enjoy­able . . . and SAFE kit helicopter that I know of.

A statement that I once thought to be impossible — until I got up the courage to research this little devil myself and find out why so many of them are being built and FLOWN by builders with no significant prior helicopter build­ing or flying credentials.

The Rotorway Exec is the latest in a long line of flying machines that have been manufactured in Chan­dler, a small suburb of Phoenix, Arizona. Like many of the best designers in this business, the rotary minded Mr. Schramm is a precision tinkerer — a man in search of a better and more feasible way to arrive at a solution — the current Exec displays the results of his many years of research.

LEFT: Some of the seven kit sections ready to head off to lucky builders all over the world.
RIGHT: Ken Clarke displays part of the tail rotor drive and control housing.

The Rotorway Exec helicopter is the sweaty product of nearly 30 years of research, seven different designs, at least ten engine changes, and more concerted design, engineering, and manufacturing talent than I have ever seen demonstrated by a com­pany in the sport aviation business — and the story ain’t over yet, kiddies.

The Exec helicopter kit is not a toy, a model, or some slight pretender to the throne of rotory winged flight. It is a full fledged helicopter with some very interesting and noteworthy ca­pabilities that some of the certificated, $150,000, ready to fly wonders, cannot equal.

The Rotorway Exec is a two-place helicopter powered by the Rotorway RW 152 — a liquid-cooled 4-stroke engine that was designed, tested and subsequent­ly manufactured by the Rotorway bunch (and if you think building the helicopters is a sweet trick—try designing and building the engine for it!).

Over ninety-five percent of the parts in the Rotorway Exec kit are actually manufactured on premises — along­ side those that they also fabricate for some of the biggest names in the aerospace game.

The Exec runs on auto gas, cruises just under 100 mph, climbs over 1000 feet per minute and can be retrofitted with floats or even a small crop dusting rig. It utilizes a two-blade semi-rigid rotor system, oxy­ acetylene welded steel frame, alum­inum monococque tail boom, and composite fuselage shells.

The kit is made available in seven primary kit groups with a total price tag just a tad under thirty thousand smackers. The kit is extremely well documented with well detailed draw­ings, manuals and numerous sets of “see/do” pictures that serve nicely to clear up confusion.

Also, personnel are available during normal busi­ness hours to answer builder’s ques­tions. A series of options are avail­ able that can decrease some of the more esoteric construction steps (such as welding) as well as increase the versatility of the Exec.

Don’t let anyone kid you. Pre-flight inspection is the most critical part of safe helicoptering.

A new elastomeric rotor head is now available that has done wonders for the handling of this aircraft and though it adds several thousand big ones to the cost of the EXEC, I must rec­ommend it highly—it is a significant addition to the Exec helicopter package.

Floats cost approximately $3500, and a crop dusting rig goes for about $3000. As part of each kit purchase, Rotorway includes a series of lessons at its Chandler based flight school in real Execs, built and main­tained by the factory.

As builders near that momentous first flight, they are taken through the rudiments of pre-flight, basic aerodynamics, Exec maintenance, hovering, and rudimentary flight skills. After one gets their ship flying and becomes proficient at basic flying skills, the owner returns and receives the bal­ance of their flight training.

Parts & Pieces

The standard helicopter rotor head appar­ently works well but I must em­phatically recommend the newer elastomeric rotor head. It’s a beaut. If you want one of these things — don’t spare the extra expense — get this head! This head uses a sliding swash plate instead of a series of push-pull cables to control collective pitch.

The elastomeric bearings in use with this rotor system is a bonded rubber assembly that sports alternating layers of rubber and brass all melded together en masse. This collection absorbs many of the pressures of centrifugal force due to the absorbing nature of the rubber elements.

One of Rotorway’s Execs undergoing inspection prior to being returned to service with the flight school.

This unit uses less com­ponents than the aforementioned sys­tem, and is basically more reliable due to its simplicity. The use of asymmetrical airfoils on the main rotor blades tends to produce more lifting power and is a feature normally found on more expensive tur­bine helicopters.

The Rotorway Exec uses a unique powerplant that was designed, built, and tested right at the factory. Each and every engine is manufactured to stringent tolerances and is shipped to the builder, factory assembled and tested (on a special test stand). The 175-pound, liquid-cooled RW 152 produces 152 horsepower and uses auto or aviation fuel at the pilot’s discretion.

This engine has compiled a fairly reliable record thus far, and I would love to see it adapted and made available for fixed wing, experimental, aircraft usage. I would imagine that this engine might possibly be manufactured affordably to solve many of the problems home­ builders are having in getting decent and affordable engines. How about it, Mr. Schramm? The industry needs it.

The helicopter cockpit is about as roomy as a VW beetle — which ain’t saying much if you have to fly it with the doors closed. Thankfully, flight with the doors removed is both allowable and encouraged — thus allowing for a bit more elbow room (and some cheap air conditioning — most welcome in the warm climes of Ari­zona).

Cockpit head room is limited but still adequate for a wide range of pilot sizes — requiring one to assume a posture appropriate to their di­mensions. Leg room (as long as you haven’t had to slouch too badly) is fairly plentiful.

LEFT: Part of the Rotorway flight school line-up. They do a good deal of training here.
RIGHT: Kind of looks like a summer home for “E.T.” doesn’t it?

Panel room is limited but consid­ering the very VFR nature of the EXEC, it actually works out to be more than adequate for all the nor­mal instruments and a radio or two as well as an extra instrument, as desired. Taking the left seat, I noted that the deeply recessed instrument panel positioning still allowed for easy viewing and adequate separation from possible distractions.

The anti-torque pedals (something akin to the rudder pedals in a fixed wing beasty — but a touch more responsive than anything the airplane jocks may be used to) are set well forward and can be adjusted to help fit the in­dividual needs of the occupant.

The dual control set-up positions the left collective lever right next to the edge of the door and the right one, snugly between the seats. Cy­clic pitch control sticks are a well curved appendage that clears even a tubby gut like mine very nicely and seems to be positioned extremely well.

Seat belts and shoulder harnesses are installed handily and al­low for a bit of added security to those not used to being so close to an open door (though this particular aerial voyer really likes such seating — what can I say? I had a warp­ed childhood — sorry MOM . . .).

The starting sequence offers few surprises. The liquid-cooled Rotorway RW 152 helicopter engine started readily and settled into a very steady and low vibration idle that barely got the water temp gauge out of the sack.

My check pilot cau­tioned me that the Rotorway Exec was sure to show me a few new tricks during my flight test, so he would introduce me to the machine by demon­strating a few of the basic maneuvers beforehand and then start handing the bird over to my clumsy control.

Despite the warm morning (nearly 90 degrees), I was surprised to note that we didn’t have to wrap the throttle way up to achieve hover and that there seemed to be plenty of power available even with the both of us aboard and a near full fuel load.

The Exec helicopter responded well despite the fact that this morning was a very gusty affair that threatened some more interesting moments for the latter part of my flight test. A bit of hovering was followed by minor maneuvering among the landing pads and some pedal turns prior to my getting my hands on the beast.

Helicopters do require good con­trol coordination — mostly because they tend to have a mind of their own and firm plans to keep it that way. The fore/aft and side to side movement is controlled by the center cyclic control stick.

Moving it fore and aft, or to either side, induces that spinning rotor (via a swash plate) to do likewise and displace the rotor’s lift to favor an inclina­tion in the appropriate direction. The anti-torque pedals control the col­lective pitch of the tail rotor blades and swing the nose left or right in sympathy with the corresponding pedal.

The large collective control stick serves two functions: Raising and lowering it changes the angle of at­ tack of the main rotor blades by sliding the swash plate up and down on the main mast. The increased or decreased angle of attack allows the chopper to ascend or descend as long as sufficient power is available to drive the rotor.

A twist grip on the end of the collective lever controls the engine rpm and can ensure that proper power is available if the pilot desires. Raising and lowering the collective does also increase/decrease engine power as well but the twist grip provides the fine timing made necessary by non-standard condi­tions.

I once compared the art of hover­ing a helicopter to balancing a mar­ble on the top of a beach ball (after having imbibed heavily) — I still stand by that analogy. The combi­nation of having to wed cyclic and collective control movement to the fancy footwork on the anti-torque pedals is the most difficult and im­portant skill necessary to helicopter flying—especially since helicopters are naturally unstable vehicles.

Flying The Rotorway Kit Helicopter

The Rotorway Exec kit helicopter is a bit of another story, though. I expected that a kit helicopter might wind up flying pretty well in light of all the research, and its long, successful history but I was ill prepared for the superb na­ture of this aircraft.

It literally handles better than several machines in the multi-hundred thousand dollar price range (especially those with two bladed rotor systems). Control forces are moderate but the response is quite snappy — as long as you understand the nuances of the Exec control system.

The bare fuselage frame is oxy-acetylene welded and serves as the main structural components of the Exec.

Being the ham hand­ed maniac that I am, I first attempt­ed to manhandle the hell out of the Exec especially since I was expect­ing the usual mindless excursions that are a part and parcel of light disc loadings and simple two-blade rotor systems. The Exec helicopter has virtually no notice­ able bad manners.

Slight pressures produce quick responses but hard, excessive, fast movements produce a noticeably “Damped” lag before heading off on a witch hunt. Control response ratios are fairly linear, throttle response is very fast — even for a piston powered chopper and the overall feel is extremely gratifying due to the mild but not overly light stick forces.

Due to the aforementioned habits ingrained by slightly twitchier machines, I had a heck of a time getting used to the Exec’s milder nature. For a little practice, I settled down and played for a while in the 15 to 20 knot gusts that were coming over the top of a nearby building. A few minutes served to dampen my gy­rations, so we decided to split.

We headed out over the desert and clipped along at a healthy 90-95 mph after a 1000 – 1100 fpm climb at 65 mph. The gusty conditions were ridden well by the light little Exec while the rotor exhibited the most “stable” handling that I have ever experienced from a non-augmented helicopter.

A combination of effects produced by the smooth but option­al elastomeric head and the gener­ous vertical and horizontal stabil­izer turned the Exec into a pleasant cruising helicopter that did not re­quire the customary death grip on the cyclic to keep things on an even keel.

We actually cruised for nearly a minute in the semi-rowdy air of that day with hands off the cyclic while the Exec flew itself — I’ve never done that in a piston helicopter before. Naturally; my biggest concerns were the safety of this machine – nice handling is wonderful but won’t save your butt if the rest of the systems don’t support the pilot in an emergency.

Auto-WHAT? Engine Out Proceedures

A few autorota­tions served as additional proof that Mr. Schramm’s considerable design efforts were not in vain. The power cut is accompanied by a slight pitch up (apparently induced by the horizontal stabilizer), no appreciable yawing from mechanical factors, relatively good rotor energy (despite the light mass inertia of this ship) and excellent response from the control system.

The descent angle (even with this much wind) was not as steep as I would have assumed. The vertical speed seemed pretty consistent at 1200 to 1400 feet per minute and a 60 to 65 mph descent felt pretty sedate. The flare occurs rapidly and quite low (which is to be expected from a machine with this kind of mass inertia—a Bell Jet Ranger, it ain’t).

Still; the energy hung in there for quite a while (allowing for plenty of time to level the skids and prevent a boom strike—one of the autorotation’s most notable hazards). The speed at flare (about 60 mph IAS) was a bit more than I needed, and the short final descent was un­eventful.

What followed thereafter, was a real eye opener. One of the cardinal rules that a helicopter pilot should follow is the strict adherence to stay­ing on the better side of their height/ velocity curve – AKA the “dead mans curve”.

In essence, the H/V curve is a relationship that tells a helicopter pilot how much speed and altitude they need during flight (most especially during low level maneuvering or takeoff) to allow for enough time and rotor energy to effect a safe landing before the ground rises up to smack one’s face.

For instance, going real fast at a very low altitude tends to give one very little time to react in the event of a power failure before the ma­chine starts digging up the real estate – not a good place to be.

LEFT: The liquid cooled RW 152 power plant used in the Exec—manufactured right at the factory to very tight tolerances. This engine has piled up an impressive record for reliability.
RIGHT: An example of one of the many ways that Rotorway simplifies the building process. “Real life” sized templates can be glued on the appropriate plate and used to cut out the new part.

So … we went out and boogied over the desert at less than 10 feet and 70+ mph—and cut the power! Well … we didn’t die, we didn’t get hurt, and we didn’t even ding the Exec. At the power cut, the Exec did some very uncharacteristic things (as compared to some of their com­petition).

First, it pitched up slight­ly (just love that stabilizer and rotor head . . .), and didn’t hit the deck like a ruptured duck—thus giving us just enough time to quickly flare with the cyclic, milk up the collec­tive, and finish shooting a hasty but successful autorotation.

Impressed as I was after this event, I was even more impressed when we did one of these downwind. Another major concern (actually, something of a nightmare . . .) has to do with tail rotor failure.

The loss of this function is a real emergency that can land a pilot in big trouble. The effect of that huge rotor has to be countered by the tail rotor so that the whole machine doesn’t spin in the opposite direction of the rotor — every action has an equal but opposite direction . . . and all that rot.

The Exec minimizes some of those hazards by virtue of its huge vertical stabilizer and the natural streamlining presented by the rest of the fuselage. The combination of these surfaces allows the Exec to “weathervane” when flown at sufficient speed to take advantage of these aerodynamic tendencies.

The slower the speed at which a helicopter will demonstrate an ability to keep “weather vaning” with moderate power usage, the better — in the event of the loss or incapacitation of the tail rotor drive or control system.

With a little power and suf­ficient forward speed, this ability gives the pilot a better choice of landing areas and eliminates the need for an immediate emergency autorotation. The Exec does well in this department — demonstrating that it can hold its own (with low cruise power—with as little as 25 mph worth of airspeed).

This, I wouldn’t have believed if I hadn’t seen it demonstrated. Mr. Walters made an approach with the tail rotor at zero pitch (no effective thrust) to one of the baseball diamonds at the practice area and seemed quite com­fortable with the process at speeds as low as 25 to 30 mph, before backing off the power. Very impressive.

Editor Jim Campbell (up front) gets his picture in the magazine for a change. HI MOM!!!

Test Pilot’s Summary

To those of you with helicopter experience, please excuse my over­ simplifications and generalizations but I felt that such was necessary due to the overwhelmingly “Fixed- Wing” nature of our readership.

No matter the experience level; it’s not hard to see that I was very impressed with the two seat Rotorway Exec Kit Helicopter. If I suddenly fall into a spare 30,000 smackers, this ma­chine could be very tempting. Even more tempting is the more affordable and sequential availability of the Exec kits.

The helicopter, itself, seems very well supported with factory run training, excellent construction info, regular help from a factory rep dur­ing business hours, and outstanding quality of individual components.

I have little doubt that a properly constructed EXEC is an airworthy aircraft. Its use of autogas, efficient powerplant, owner maintained nature and a host of other factors make the Exec a formidable competitor for a Sport Pilot’s mad money.

Even more important, the Exec seems to have the requisite performance and handling necessary to ease a pilot through several of the more common types of heli-hazards. By the way, Rotorway sells a video presentation that describes the Exec in detail — I highly recommend it to even the most casual of interested parties. It’s entertaining, informative and rather nicely done.

If the Rotorway Exec has any serious prob­lems (other than its $30,000 cost — though it’s extremely realistic in terms of today’s market), I don’t know of them. I’m rather amazed at what is possible when someone puts their mind to it — the Rotorway Exec helicopter is quite a testament to the power of the human “will to succeed.”

My congratulations to Mr. Schramm. Personally; I’d love to have one of these machines and a set of floats … what a ball. Now; that sounds like freedom to me.

EDITOR: A slightly humerous yet timely and poignant ad taken from a 1987 magazine promoting the Rotorway Exec helicopter video.

SEE IT AT HOME… AND BELIEVE THE THRILL IS BACK!!

AFFORDABLE

The RotorWay Exec is an unbelievable innovation in personal transportation! After all, who would believe this helicop­ter costs less than a luxury sports car? That its main rotor hub utilizes state-of-the-art elastomeric bearing technology found in helicopters costing $150,000 and up, or that when it comes to perfor­mance, safety and styling it meets or beats anything in its class, or that its four cylinder water cooled 152 H.P. power plant runs on auto fuel, not expensive AV gas!?? Can you believe all this? YOU WILL!!!…Once you see it on video!

SEEING IS BELIEVING

As the old saying goes, seeing is believ­ing and not only will you see first hand the evolution of helicopters in general and the evolution of the Exec in particular, but you’ll also take a heart pounding ride with our pilot through picture post­ card deserts and majestic snow covered mountain peaks.

Then it’s on to breath­ taking Lake Powell where sculptured red rock towers rise hundreds of feet from the waters edge providing awesome views of the pristine blue water beaches below. Then, with tranquility behind us it’s time for more action packed high speed flying. You won’t believe what this ship can do… until you see it!

UTILITY WITH EXCITEMENT

You’ll see that fun isn’t the only thing the Exec has to offer. Agricultural spray equipment and water floats add utility to the long list of uses this personal helicopter has to offer.

If you’ve ordered one of our information packets in the past you’ll definitely want this video, and our updated information package. You won’t believe what the Scorpion and Exec have evolved into… until you see it!

COST EFFECTIVE OPERATION

Something you CAN believe however, is the fact that the low end of general aviation is dying, if not already dead. FACT! Sales of 2 and 4 place fixed wing aircraft are currently 20% of what they were 10 years ago! Why? Most industry experts say skyrocketing costs are to blame.

That’s hogwash! When you allow for inflation over the past 10 years, the cost really hasn’t increased all that much. So, what’s the reason? Lack of new designs is one thing, but even more so, is the fact that entry level fixed wing aircraft don’t offer much excitement or utility. Think about it.

Is it cost effective to fly the company airplane 200 miles? Not very, and distances longer than that are best traveled on commercial flights. This is especially true now with airline dereg­ulation. Plus the fact that you still need ground transportation going to and from the airport.

In case you haven’t realized it… it’s time for a change. It’s time for the helicopter. You’re ready for excitement and we’ve got it…THE THRILL IS BACK!!! Point to point NOT airport to airport is the most efficient way to fly within a 200 mile radius. Exec totally fulfills the urgent demand for this type of essential transportation.

HELICOPTER VS. SMALL AIRPLANE

Some people will tell you general avia­tion hasn’t changed in forty years. The truth is they just haven’t been looking in the right direction. Helicopters WILL re­place the small airplane! We’ve made this tape to prove it to you, so prepare yourself for some shocking reality!

On top of all this, it isn’t necessary to be IFR rated to fly a helicopter. If weather moves in and your halfway to your destination just land where you run out of sky and safely wait it out. With as little as 2 or 3 acres of land you can park it at your home or of­fice. (Depending on local housing density.)

For you video buffs, this production util­izes the latest in Digital Video Effects and state-of-the-art Ampex Digital Optics combined with an incredibly dynamic soundtrack! The days of two dimensional travel are Over. You can live in a whole new world of affordable three dimensional point to point transportation!

See it…then believe it! THE THRILL IS BACK!!!

The post Rotorway Exec Kit Helicopter 1987 appeared first on Redback Aviation.