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Instruments

Here's what comes in the kit from RotorWay, everything you need but bearing temp gauges which I'm sure sometime in the future RotorWay will add to the kit as standard issue because of recent events with the secondary shaft breakages.

You don't get anything to hook up the static ports on the airspeed , VFI indicator or the altimeter, so if you want them to read correctly and up to speed you'll need some fittings and tubing to accomplish this.

Rotorway says they work ok like they are but we think if that was the case all the certified ships wouldn't have static ports. Our tubs are pretty open to outside air compaired to certified planes and helicopters so thats most likely where they get that opinion from, I've no idea.

Most of the gauges are automotive style and not what they call TSO'ed units,

if they were they would cost a lot more plus they may even weigh more and bring the cost of the kit up considerably. You might notice in the pictures that the airspeed indictor reads 5 knots, it was doing that right out of the box lol. Tom Smith says it was fine when it left RotorWay and blamed it on the rough shipping lol. I guess if it doesn't have an adjustment we'll have to see about getting it replaced.

About the only thing we didn't like was having to add post lights to some gauges which is standard even on some TSO'ed instruments. When the bulbs in the Westech gauges need to be replaced they will need to be cut out and respliced into the wiring because we didn't want to add a connector to each one of them. Normal changeable bulbs would sure be an improvement to these units but I'm sure Westech has a good reason for making them like they are.

It would have been better to mount the panel gauges on the foot pedal panel about 1/2 inch lower

because we could have stacked them in a nice clean pattern. At the time we had no idea we would have to install anything else there so you may want to lower yours a little to avoid that mistake.

Don't get them too low or you'll cover them up with your feet

on the pedals. We used a label maker to make the gauge say Bearing Temp, it's not factory but it looks pretty good.

Instruments We Added

Bearing Temp Gauge......for monitoring the secondary upper bearing temperature

We bought this unit direct from RotorWay somewhere around 70 dollars. Some builders went straight to Westech and ordered another model that adds a lot more safety. I also think it says bearing temp on it and the biggest thing is it has a red warning light to get your attention that can be preset to the temp you want it to go off at, a very nice feature I would have liked to have. Thinking about it though, the temps on our ship seem to run about 50 degrees over ambiant tempreture so I guess you'd have to pick the highest temp you wanted to see it go.

On July 16th 2004 we had a shaft break

and found this gauge to be totaly useless as far as we could tell. Our shaft broke and just prior to it happening it showed a temp of 142 which was a normal operating temp for the ambiant tempreture we were running in that day.

To some it up, having this gauge installed turned out to be a total waste of the time it took to install not to mention the money it cost. It also adds weight to the ship not to mention the time we spend on it during our instrument scan at least thats the results we had.

However, having it installed does make you feel better right up until that shaft breaks lol.

Flight Hour Meter........... for monitoring Main Rotorblade and Tailrotor Time

This is something the big boys use in factory helicopters and I think would save us a bunch of money on rotor blades.

I was watching the guys in Gatlinburg, Tennessee, that give rides to tourists and noticed they leave their engines running all day long, even when they aren't flying. They don't count time on their transmissions or rotor blades until they pull pitch on the collective. It makes sense to me, no stress on the blades means no harm.

The transmissions, bearings and running gear are all still turning and it would seem that not counting the time on them while not as severe as full power is still wearing on things. In a normal automobile one of the worst things on the engine is letting it idle so go figure.

I'm told a lot of RotorWay builders only hook up their hour meters up to work when the collective is pulling pitch on the blades and you know there's a lot of time on the engine that isn't recorded like warm up for example. That might sound menial to some but personally I think it should be counted on the engine hour meter and that's why we installed two separate hour meters. The second unit cost us about $70.00 dollars but then a new set of main rotor blades are somewhere around $7,000.00 so we think its a wise investment of dollars as well as the weight its adding to the ship. We installed this right on top of the regular hour meter because we didn't want to take up space on the pilots sides foot panel.

Airspeed

Rotor/Engine

Altimeter

Bearing Temp

Compass