I have found over the last 20 years that the aluminum shielding that spans between the radiator and the rear of the body panels to be counter productive and always in the way when performing service. Those panels also take a good deal of time to fabricate and fortunately in later years Rotorway no longer included them in the kit. I have removed them from a lot of ships. If you are building you might consider eliminating those shields. Here are just two of the 6 Rotorway’s here without the heat shields

Not sure if this is the place to post this but , the last two wrecks I’ve got had brackets hanging from the top of the cabin to hang headsets on. I strongly suggest against this. These will tear your head up in a wreck. Hang headsets somewhere else.
Another suggestion is to recess all the switches in the over head switch panel. Get them up where they can’t cut your head. First Scorpion I crashed had the screws in the top windows come across the top of my helmet. Some nice deep scratches there . Glad I was wearing a helmet that day. That’s been over 50 years ago. How time flies.

On my last shut down my first bearing in my TR drive shaft was making a noise at the same point in rotation during coast down. I tried loosening the mounting bolts and repositioning but when I torque it down it continues to make the noise. Someone told me it could be a side load. Should I fly a bit and check it or is it failing and I should replace it? Thanks for any advice.

Nick

Over the past 40 years of maintaining and instructing in Rotorway helicopters one issue has reared its ugly head countless times. You are flying along when suddenly you notice a new noise coming from the engine bay. You make a precautionary landing and discover that one or more exhaust manifold bolts have backed out either all the way and are now missing or enough to allow the exhaust gadget to be torn leaking red hot combustion gasses out toward your fuel tank.

What do you do now? You could elect to continue flying home with the very real possibility that the hot exhaust could burn through your plastic fuel tank.. not a good choice. You need to fix it before flying but where are you going to buy that exhaust gasket and the needed bolts before some cow in the pasture you landed in rubs your helicopter into the dirt.

Here is the simple solution that I came up with and it has worked out very well with no blown exhaust gaskets or lost bolts encountered since we started installing this simple modification. I ordered new drilled head exhaust bolts from the company listed on the package and replaced the old style bolts with the drilled head bolts. After the new bolts are torqued to spec, run a piece of safety wire through the drilled head of each of the 3 bolts on each manifold. Run the wire in such a manner that the bolt cannot back out, the wire keeps it from unscrewing at all.

The two bolts that this may not work on are on the inside corner under the top manifold bend where sometimes there is not enough room to get that new bolt started. If that is the case you can loop the safety wire over that one torx head bolt on each side to keep it from backing out and the same wire runs through the heads of the other two bolts on that manifold. You may wish to try this mod, you will be happy that you did. The bolts shown are a tad bit longer that the original bolts so I added two or three washers under the head of each bolt to prevent them from bottoming out in the threaded hole.

Something that I often see is the leading edge of the main rotor blades with chips in the paint. Each paint chip and bug splat disrupts the airflow over and under the blades causing parasitic drag that requires more engine power to overcome. I always sand the leading edge of the blades to keep them smooth and often clean the bug splats off to keep the blades flying efficiently. This photo is of my own rotor blades with hundreds of hours on them.

Here is another example.

Until very recently all Rotorway helicopters came stock with an oil tank cap/dip stick/vent that allowed the oily engine vapors into the engine/drive train area coating everything with an oily film that attracted dirt and caused belts to slip. Years ago VPS designed and produced custom oil tank caps that incorporate a removable dip stick and a side vent that a hose is attached to that vents all engine vapors out of the engine bay and overboard.

This is the stock cap with vent holes around the bottom.


Here are several examples of vent caps with removable oil level dip sticks that are installed on the helicopters in my hangar.

Hi everyone, Shane here, 42, based in Cork, Ireland. Been lurking on the forum for the past year while I've been working on my A600 Talon build finally decided to register properly and contribute where I can. Background: aeronautical engineer by trade (composites/aerodynamics, Dalton Aerospace in Cork), PPL(A) but not CFI and not an A&P; so I'll be reading more than posting on the deep technical threads. Building the A600 at my hangar at Cork Airport (EICK), about 60% through the build process now. Been at it 18 months, hoping to fly by Q2 2027 if all goes well. Got interested in Rotorway after a flight in an Exec 162F at a fly-in at Weston (EIWT) back in 2022. The A600 felt like the right kit for me Rotax 914 is well-supported in Europe, reasonable build time, and the support community (this forum + Orv's tips) is excellent. Challenges of building in Ireland: parts shipping from Chandler AZ is pricey and slow (typical 2-3 weeks), and post-Brexit there's extra customs friction when sourcing from UK vendors. I've learned to plan ahead and group orders. Anyone else here building in Europe? Would love to compare notes. Looking forward to being part of the community properly now. Will share build photos in the Documentation/Blog section once I've got something worth showing.

This solo student pilot was practice hovering when someone parked an equipment trailer behind him. When he turned and saw it he was startled and applied lateral cyclic without sufficient altitude, caught a skid on the ground with lateral travel and experienced a dynamic rollover with resulting fire. The student pilot was able to escape with no injuries. This is also a great lesson as to why we cover the heat wrap on the exhaust with heavy aluminum foil and SS zip ties to shed spilled oil away from the red hot exhaust.

Over the 40 years that I have been teaching owners how to fly their Rotorway helicopters one item needed continual attention and that is the scan of the rotor RPM gauge. I scan that RPM indication about every 3-5 seconds to insure that it is where it needs to be. After a while you can also tune into the engine hum to indicate the engine/rotor RPM backed up by your instrument scan. The problem arises when the pilot becomes distracted by something that takes his/her attention away from monitoring the gauges. 

There are several examples that I know of where the pilot got distracted by something that took his attention away from the critical primary responsibility of keep the rotor RPM in the green and that lack of attention cost each of these pilots their lives. 

Jim was a great guy and loved his Rotorway. He had been flying it for several years, maintaining it himself and  keeping it flying by performing his own inspections and maintenance. One day while flying around his home area at fairly low altitude the speculation is that he heard and felt a sudden anomaly which distracted his full attention from flying to try to figure out what had happened. At this point the life saving rule is "If in doubt, auto out". Had Jim immediately entered an autorotation he most likely would be here telling his own story, but he is not. 

Jim got distracted, most likely trying to figure out what had caused the event, to the point that his focus was no longer on flying the helicopter and he let his rotor RPM decay to the point that the main rotor blades stalled and the helicopter fell vertically to the ground. His son in law told me that when they found Jim he was sitting upright in the cockpit still strapped into his seat and the main rotor blades showed no indication that they were turning when the helicopter slammed into the ground. 

Depending on a lot of factors, at some point around 80% more or less (please chime in here Homer) the drag on the rotor blades exceeds the ability of the engine to keep them turning and they will actually stop mid air and your helicopter becomes a lawn dart. There were no governors available for Jim to install but had he been using one to maintain his rotor RPM when he was distracted he most likely would still be with us. 

The cause of the bang that Jim heard/felt was the front bracket on the vertical stabilizer had developed a crack that propagated across the bracket from the bolt hole causing bracket to break. By the rust in the crack the NTSB determined that the crack was present for some time as it grew across the bracket. The broken bracket no longer supported the vertical stabilizer and it was now able to flutter in the air stream. the stinger at the bottom of the stabilizer contacted the tail rotor blades causing the destruction of the blades and the noise/jolt that Jim must have felt and heard. At that point Jim should have immediately entered an autorotation to the ground to figure out what went wrong. His failure to do so ended in his being distracted enough to allow the main rotor RPM to decay to the point of main rotor stall. 

Just last year I assisted six owners in installing their ACET governors. I have instructed in many Rotorways now with these governors and have been so impressed by them that I have installed one in my own 162f. 

Case #2 is that of Scott down in Texas. I had given Scott both is hover and flight training in his Rotorway 162f and in the years after he obtained his commercial rating and both R22 and R44 SFAR 73 training. He had been flying helicopters with governors for several years at this time. One day as he finished the 100 hour service on his 162f, he took it up to altitude for a test flight. Several friends/neighbors watched him climb out, enter the downwind and then saw a large amount of smoke pouring from the rear of the helicopter. Shortly after noticing the smoke they witnessed the main rotor blades slow and stop and the helicopter fell nearly vertically to the ground killing Scott instantly. 

Upon inspection by the NTSB it was discovered that the valve cover gasket had torn allowing a large amount of oil to pour onto the hot exhaust. Had Scott immediately entered an autorotation he would have survived to fly again. The inflight distraction of smelling a lot of smoke in the cockpit most likely diverted Scott's attention away from monitoring his RPM allowing it to decay to the point of rotor stall. 

If Scott had been flying with a governor that would have maintained the rotor RPM during the distraction, the main rotors would not have stalled and Scott would have survived. 

Food for thought.

I recently had a client bring their early 162f to me to repair. It came with the chain drive and 30mm secondary. While flying the secondary shaft broke just inside the top of the upper secondary bearing. When the drive train lost power he was able to get the helicopter to the ground with some damage but not total damage. It seems that the injected engines produce more torque than the 30mm shaft can handle. If you know of anyone who is flying with the chain drive 30mm secondary and has upgraded their carbureted engine to a fuel injected engine, they might ant to send that 30mm secondary to Peter Koiman to gave it upgraded for safety and longevity.