HINTS AND TIPS

The Buttons below will take you through the different hints and tips that I feel will make your helicopter safer and more reliable. If you have been to a page previously, be sure to refresh it as they often are updated and your computer may pull up the old page from memory.
   
         

Most of the photos in this section have been taken during my Pre-flight instruction airworthiness inspections of several hundred Rotorway Helicopters. I have posted them here so that you can see pictures of actual events that have occured and will occur again. Don't let them happen to your ship!

Today is 11/18/08. This web site has been up for nearly a year now and I am still seeing many ships without the vertical stabilizer mods completed, the fuel tank outlet fittings unmodified, and many other safety issues not addressed. Don't procrastinate. I have put this web site together for your benefit, so that you will be able to enjoy your ship without experiencing the same problems that I have in over 5,500 hours flying Rotorway helicopters. Please take your flying and maintenance seriously. You can benefit from my experiences for free, you do not need to make the same costly mistakes that so many others have made. That is why this web site is here, for you.

I always enjoy hearing back from anyone that has enjoyed the web site. Feel free to email me with any comments at orv@flywithorv.com

It is a good idea to at least review the hints and tips and to accomplish those that you feel are needed on your helicopter before I arrive to provide flight training in your Rotorway helicopter. Some of the modifications can be completed at a later date but some may need to be completed before I get there or, once I arrive, we can complete them together. If you have any questions call me at 417-464-9999 or email me at orv@flywithorv.com

I am looking forward to helping you achieve your helicopter piloting dreams. It is always fun but even more so when we have confidence in the reliability of your helicopter. Since there are so many different builders, there is a big difference in the methods used to build each individual helicopter.

The hints and tips on this web site are included to help you keep your Experimental Helicopter in the air and to not become a statistic. For example, during our sessions of maintenance training on your own helicopter I will teach you a reliable way of checking the belt tension on all belts and when the procedure is followed a belt failure would be rare. This method is much simpler than the way some check their belts tensions. Below is a photo of former student Nick Stoltzfus making a modification to his fuel sender unit as per our suggestions that are found in Hints and Tips.

 

The list of items in the check list section includes the regulatory requirements to insure that both you and your helicopter are legal for the rigors of helicopter flight training. The following areas in this section address the mechanical issues that you should be aware of. If you have any questions about any issue regarding yourself or your helicopter before I arrive for your flight training, please contact me so that we can discuss those issues and resolve them before I arrive.

The energy and time put into this and other areas of this web site were invested to aid the builder (EXPERIMENTAL HELICOPTERS) and pilots in making well informed decisions based upon actual in-flight experiences of real pilots that are actually flying these helicopters.

We may never meet all of those who view these pages but we hope you find benefit from what you read here.

We would encourage anyone who has found this information of particular benefit by helping you avoid a potetial problem to drop us an email with your story and or a photo so that we can share that information with others on this site. If you would like to add your own experiences and photos please send them to orv@flywithorv.com and we will try to post them on the web site ASAP . Let's all learn from eachothers experiences so that we do not have to learn by making the same mistakes on our own.

So please enjoy and note the disclaimer on the bottom of each page, you alone are responsible for the decisions you make regarding the use of the information presented on this web site.