Jan 16, 2006

Dear Mr. Barnett,

I normally do not respond to the numerous opinions, be they positive or negative, posted on the Internet concerning my Rotor & Wing article on engine reliability, Robinson helicopters or the Robinson Helicopter Company. But, your accusations that my article and the company’s advertising is misleading and false is such a distortion, I’ll take the time to respond. 

Your discussion of the R22/R44 contains numerous factual errors (The R44 was not certified in 1993; Frank Robinson never worked for MD; SFAR 73 was not originated by Frank Robinson, to name just a few) and many opinions expressed as fact (Ask the pilots who have sold their Jet Rangers and bought an R44 if it’s “not a replacement”). However, I am going to limit my response to your discussion of my article on engine reliability that was published in Rotor & Wing magazine and you have posted on your website.

 I would like to preface my response with the fact that my email address appeared at the end of the article and I have responded to every inquiry, pro and con that I received.  You did not contact me with any questions, ask for any explanations or seek any background information before commenting on my motives and information as being false and misleading. 

 1.      You use phrases such as “interesting that Tim Tucker conveniently used total number of accidents…” and  “Tim Tucker fails to disclose…”to impugn my motives which you never bothered to investigate.  The fact of the matter is I used total accidents and, more importantly, accident causes as a percent of the total accidents for the precise purpose of leveling the playing field.  Sure their are more 206/500’s than R22/R44’s and sure they are going to have more accidents and more engine failures.  So you can’t compare accidents across the board.  That’s exactly why looking at certain accidents, as a percentage of total accidents is a way of leveling the playing field.  Numbers of aircraft or numbers of flight hours should not affect the percentage of accidents caused by weather, maintenance, engine failures or anything else.  You may not like this method, but it deals with hard facts and to call it misleading or false is unfair.

 2.      You claim the fact the BH206 includes both the B and L models is a “very important issue”.  Why?  This article is about turbine engine reliability.  What difference does a C20 turbine engine or a C30 turbine engine make in the context of this topic? Answer: None!

     3.      You quote R44 production numbers and claim there is not any “appreciable number of flight hours” while ignoring the over 3000 R22’s flying a very  “appreciable number of flight hours”.  Certainly, the R22 fleet does not have the total hours of the Jet Ranger fleet, but for someone not to consider the tremendous number of hours put on the R22 in flight schools around the world as not being “appreciable” and not enough for comparisons is to ignore what has happened in the helicopter industry the last 20 years.  You then state “The only fair comparison then, would be for Timmy to compare an equivalent number of helicopters manufactured in a similar time period by the manufactures that he chose to compare.  This would have resulted in incredibly different numbers then, and the article would never have been written.” (By the way, my name is Tim.  Using “Timmy“ in this purposely belittling fashion demeans both you and your argument.)  You don’t back up this opinion stated as fact with anything at all; no data, no numbers, no facts, nothing but undocumented speculation about what you think I would have written. 

     4.      Your “Note the four year period depicted in Figure Two:” paragraph is so over the top it’s barely worth commenting on, but since you opened the door I’m going to seize the opportunity.  This article and figure 2 is about engine failures.  There is no insinuation at all about overall safety.  Additionally, your “30 year” and “literally millions of hours” statements are totally meaningless when looking at accidents as a percent of the total during figure 2’s timeframe. Perhaps you have seen the recent NTSB’s Probable Cause Reports through the end of 2003 (the most current reports as of Aug 2005).  There has not been one single accident caused by an engine component failure in the R44 during the eight-year period from 1996 – 2003.  So, express this fact however you like: engine failures per number of aircraft, engine failures per 100,000 flight hours, engine failures per 1,000,000 flight hours or, as I did, engine failures as a percent of total accidents and the number is still zero.  This is not false or misleading.

     5.      Most importantly, your discussion does not even address the more significant issues in the article i.e. the historical and technical reasons why the R22/R44 engines are so reliable.  Your just want to argue the statistics.  You have missed the whole point of what early piston helicopter manufactures did with the engines and how Robinson went in a totally different direction.  One of my more important intentions with the article was to differentiate between the R22/R44’s  “properly derated piston engines” and the tweaked up piston engines in earlier helicopter designs.  Consequently, your entire discussion using HAI’s data to compare turbine helicopters with all reciprocating helicopters is totally invalid. You are making the same mistakes many uninformed pilots have made.  My article is about engine reliability.  Your using HAI’s total accident rate, their fatal accident rate and hours flown is not only again, meaningless to this discussion but I think most would agree “misleading”.

You magnanimously state the intention of your website is to “improve awareness and to spread knowledge to pilots” and then ask people to contribute money to your site.  If this is truly your intent, I challenge you to post this letter, in it’s entirety in the R44 section of your website.  Not doing so will demonstrate that you are just another iconoclast out for personal notoriety and not to be taken seriously.

I would be happy to discuss the many other factual errors, inaccuracies, and incomplete discussions that are laced throughout your website. 

Regards, 

Tim Tucker

Chief Instructor