3 March 2008
Robinson has released more details of its forthcoming R66 aircraft (pictured in April 2008’s <b><i>FLYER</i></b> magazine).
Frank Robinson, the company’s founder, says that the new turbine-powered aircraft is moving forward at a ‘slow but steady pace’ – slower, in fact, than he’d like but as he pointed out, ‘we don’t want any surprises later on’.
The new powerplant – the Rolls-Royce 300 turboshaft – is proving a good choice, says Robinson. The promise is that the time between overhauls will be the same as the R44’s piston engine; the engine currently in the prototype is ‘close’ to the final production engine.
The R66 will not be fitted with a glass cockpit, says Robinson: the manufacturer says that this sort of thing would be inappropriate in a VFR machine. ‘I’m not interested in anything that distracts the pilot from keeping his eyes outside the cockpit,’ says Robinson, implying that once such systems could provide everything that a pilot needed at a glance, they would be considered.
Robinson reports that the aircraft has been flying for several months, and that its handling characteristics are not unlike those of the R44.
‘Of course there are some procedural differences, and it has that turbine whine on start-up, but the vibration was a little less than the R44 and the speed is the same or higher,’ he said. ‘The rate of climb is higher, but you expect that.’
