RAF responds to Hub Bar Query

[barnstorm2]

Background:
For those not familiar with my situation. I have purchased a Twinstarr with 8 year old RAF blades and hub.

Though many of these hubs and blades are flying today there have been some incendents with these hub bars so I decided to swap mine out.

One of my instructors contacted RAF a few years ago about his hub bar and was told there was a 'volentary recall' on the hub bar and because of this they swapped out his hub bar for $500.

Update:
I contacted RAF and sent them detailed photos of my hub bar and blades (posted elsewhere on this forum).

Here is there response cut-n-pasted from the email they sent me:
(I added the bolding)

__________________________________________________ ____


Hi Timothy
I have attached the product notices on the hub bar and rotor blades
unfortunately the replacement programs no longer apply.The hub bar is $
980 USD ( see picture attached) the rotor blade set including hub bar is
$2692 USD. Both can be shipped with in 5 working days.
Regards Don

----------------------------------------------------------------

I am now quite glad that I opted to put my money toward a new set of sport copter blades and hub.

[barnstorm2]

Today I remailed RAF back telling them that I was upset about not being able to get the $500 replacement.

Here is there response:

-------------------------------------------------------------

Hi Timothy
There is nothing wrong with what you have.We have made some improvements
as new materials and technology is available.This all cost money to
do.If we intend on staying in business we can't give out our product at
a below our cost price regardless of how outrageous it is to you.
Regards Don.

[Aussie_Paul]

Today I remailed RAF back telling them that I was upset about not being able to get the $500 replacement.

Here is there response:

-------------------------------------------------------------

Hi Timothy
There is nothing wrong with what you have.We have made some improvements
as new materials and technology is available.This all cost money to
do.If we intend on staying in business we can't give out our product at
a below our cost price regardless of how outrageous it is to you.
Regards Don.

As usual a very sympathetic Don.

Aussie Paul.:)

[Harry_S.]

My first feelings were with Tim.

Don's reply required more diplomacy that what he showed. IMO...very crude.

But, you're in business to make money...spelled profit...and if your manufacturing cost goes up, so does your selling price?!

.

[Rehan K.Janjua]

Good that that you are going for the Sport Copter Blades and hub.
With courtesy and cooperation. Business ethics are a must to sustain.

Which actually means a lot.
Keep us posted and hope the new set up will be worthwhile.

Best regards.
Rehan

[Brent Drake]

I have been thinking of getting a new set of RAF blades for my Twinstar, But if you have had that many changes with the blades and hub bar, then they should at least try to make it right. That's good business ethics. It's not like Tim is just wanting a new set to say he has the new style. His concern is for safety. If RAF is not sure of its product, then they need to stand behind it. Even if its at a highly reduced price. Maybe I'll get a set of Sport Copter blades as well.

[mark treidel]

Tim, thanks for posting this thread. It strongly confirms what others have said all along. Ray Charles could have seen this one coming!!! I for one commend you on your decision to take your business elsewhere. Looks like Brent's eyes are a bit wider also. IMHO, the way people do business is equally important as their product (precluding safety of course).

[automan1223]

Tim,

500 should only cost you to upgrade the winglets and the 2 bolts.

The winglets are slightly thicker at the edge and are "correctly" profiled in 3D.

The bolts securing the winglets have been updated as well. The standard AN 12 hardware has been updated with NAS spec 501 bolt. Now RAF makes a big deal in the product notice about the bolt having a much larger radius under the head and special washers needed. I have the nas printout I got from some of my millitary contacts and except for the heat treat and slightly higher tensile strength its a modest improvement there is no super large radius that requires special cut washers etc. .


I dont think there is any reason to change out the whole bar.

The older blades had balance issues so before you go nuts on upgrading the bar see how they fly and then figure it.

Jonathan

[PW_Plack]

Running that big pitch-pivot bolt in tension would be my biggest concern with the RAF-style hub bar. I'm not sure they could make that bolt beefy enough to resolve that concern for me.

[automan1223]

RAF has taken a lot of heat over the years. After getting the latest copies of their product notices I laugh and cry at what has to be printed. Many people think they "just want to sell more parts" but after being involved with the ortmayer situation there is no economy in killing someone and making the doctors rich.

RAF blades have LIMITS, Performance and TIME on all components. Abuse or neglect your hardware and your flying on gods time.

Some issues the you should be aware of since I have not heard about RAF coming out with any product notice regarding this.

1. Creaking noises when carrying assembled blade/hub bar. Caused by loose straps (bolted to blade section) or mechanical loss of bonding between the spar and the layups. You can fix the first by snugging the nuts.

2. 1000 hour tbo on the blades.

3. Loose pitch bolts. On my new blade with a few hours on them set the small 1/4" pitch bolts were loose on side. This could allow the pitch to change in flight, work loose, work the winglet against the center hub section etc. My tracking was going out..

Better grade epoxy paint on the leading edge and tips.

Other than that they are a good and reasonably priced set of blades. They have good performance characteristics, bang for the buck....

Jonathan

[barnstorm2]

I do like the performance of my RAF blades and the RAF blades on my intructor's machine. Of course I did not have to be the one to track them.

My 'beef' is that:

1. I think a more reputable company would have 'recalled' these hubs after cracking and bolt problems were found even if the problems were in only a small amount of machines.

2. If you are going to offer a "voluntary recall" only offering it for 1 year and then doubleing the price is poor customer service and not responsible.

It is not like the improvements to the new hub bar are for performance the improvements are obviously for RELIABLITY AND SAFTEY.

I would have a much better opinion of RAF if they would have simply extended the trade-in policy to anyone who had the affected hubs. It is not like I am getting an extra hub they take back the original and the turned in hub must be in very good condition and show no signs of wear to qualify.

BTW my hub bar and blades will be for sale once my SC blades arrive and are installed. $2000.00 OBO. Can be picked up in Cincinnati, Ohio or Greencastle, IN.

[automan1223]

I agree with what you are saying Tim. I guess it is cheaper to pay lawyers and LLC up in canada than to make everyone safe. If it was me. I could not sleep at night knowing that there was a possible defect that only required a minimal investment to correct. Doubling the cost is getting greedy if in fact the price is now what you said. THe product notice was confusing at first. the original cost was 350.00

What really pissed me off is that I did not have 5 hours on the NEW blades, having bought them new around the time they updated them. RAF KNEW they were sending out a hub bar and blade set that would need an update in short order if they did not already have the fix production when they sent them out to me.

To me that is just plain dishonest in an of itself. Thats ok, because as long as you are consistant then I know what to expect of you. Let me stress I am not an RAF basher. Everyone knows the right side of UP with the forums. Owning my own repair shop I know the costs of doing business but I always take care of my own mistakes and dont foist them off on a customer.

A hub bar is no big mystery. Material should not cost more than 250 to make one and when I do make my next bar it will have ALL hardware in sheer. Not tension.


Jonathan

[Aussie_Paul]

I agree with what you are saying Tim. I guess it is cheaper to pay lawyers and LLC up in canada than to make everyone safe. If it was me. I could not sleep at night knowing that there was a possible defect that only required a minimal investment to correct. Doubling the cost is getting greedy if in fact the price is now what you said. THe product notice was confusing at first. the original cost was 350.00

What really pissed me off is that I did not have 5 hours on the NEW blades, having bought them new around the time they updated them. RAF KNEW they were sending out a hub bar and blade set that would need an update in short order if they did not already have the fix production when they sent them out to me.

To me that is just plain dishonest in an of itself. Thats ok, because as long as you are consistant then I know what to expect of you. Let me stress I am not an RAF basher. Everyone knows the right side of UP with the forums. Owning my own repair shop I know the costs of doing business but I always take care of my own mistakes and dont foist them off on a customer.

A hub bar is no big mystery. Material should not cost more than 250 to make one and when I do make my next bar it will have ALL hardware in sheer. Not tension.


Jonathan

I agree Jonathin, BUT there have been many blades over the years with bolts in tension. Bensons, Rotor hawk, here in Oz jack allan and bert Larkin.

Any of the ground adjustable pitch blades relied on several bolts in tension.

Aussie Paul.:)

[automan1223]

Paul,

RAF is the only one I know of with a SINGLE bolt in tension..

Little redundancy with that.

[Harry_S.]

Jonathan:

To my knowledge, there has only been one ref. bolt failure of the RAF blades. The fact that hundreds of RAF's are flying around the world, racking up thousands of hours with only one failure...is quite solid evidence, as to the integrity of that application...IMO.

Also, IMO, you are more cognizant of the condition and obvious lack of maintenance of the machine that suffered this failure. Am I correct?


.

[C. Beaty]

Assigning life expectancies to rotors and hub assemblies is silly without knowing the stress levels in a particular application.

Stress levels can only be obtained by recording strain gauge data.

I doubt if the hub will ever fail with the blades properly aligned and tuned on an RAF-2000. The magic rubber bushing works wonders.

In some applications; Marchettis with 2 x 4 masts and Parsons trainers in particular, rotor vibration is so bad I wouldn’t trust them to go around the pattern.

[Aussie_Paul]

Paul,

RAF is the only one I know of with a SINGLE bolt in tension..

Little redundancy with that.

True.

Aussie Paul.:)

[gyroplanes]

I'm not a fan of the RAF blade retention system. I just can't get comfortable with the single-bolt-in-tension regardless of it's stronger than necessary design.

Tim,
I really can't think of a company that would extend a product recall beyond a free, or low cost replacement period, especially to other than the original purchaser, and especially a small company such as RAF.

In General Aviation, it is standard practice to offer replacement of suspect parts for a very limited time and more often only to aircraft under warranty. Robinson, Piper, Cessna, Raytheon do this all of the time.

Airworthiness Directives (ADs) are issued daily and in almost all cases there is no financial relief of any kind to the product owner (unless under warranty and that is often 6 mos) to correct often fatal flaws in a product.

I'll have to agree with Harry that since there was only one (suspect) failure and that the part IS over qualified for the job, that the part is adequate and an the replacement is an upgrade. Consider all the upgrades that GBA Sparrowhawk has made to their machines.

Chuck,
You know as well as I do that the aviation industry, with all of it's money, testing and engineers, seldom gets the "time life" components life expectancy right the first time. I can't think of any life limited component that hasn't had it's life expectancy changed (either up or down) by the manufacturer.

IIRC the Hughes 269-300 family blades (very similar to the J-2) had an original life expectancy of around 1100 hours. Eventually the blade life was extended to something like 5500 hours. The J-2 was history before the blade life was increased and the J-2 owners never got to benefit from the life limit increase.

A $160,000 Robinson R-22 becomes a $35,000 Robinson R-22 when it hits the magic 2,200 hours. RHC mandates an overhaul of the entire aircraft at that time. It used to be 2,000 hours.

Having said all that, it's not the way I run my seat tank business. Just some random thoughts and reality.

[C. Beaty]

The point I was trying to make, Tom, is that RAF rotors may be completely satisfactory in one application and totally unsatisfactory in another.

And it’s not the fault of the blades either, it’s more the machine than anything else.

Gold plated blades blessed by the Pope would still jackhammer on a gyro with a solid 2 x 3 mast or one with a pair of 2 x 2s clamped in a fore/aft position.

Durability claims for blades used under such widely varying conditions is a potentially lethal joke.

[automan1223]

The fact that there was only 1 failure means little without actually knowing the total hours, use, abuse, neglect and possible mis handling of the rotor system. An engineer is really great when it comes to "ball park" figures. They can run numbers all day long as if life was a static equation. Many times a day they are corrected. Call it chaos theory or whatever. The final accident report trippled the estimated hours from Ortmayers 300 to over 900. Add in neglect. A crappy set of Early build rotor blades when the layups and build consistancy were magical at best. A mis tuned setup. Several impacts or blade strikes at speed and there you have it. The major point driven home is not the obivous but the fact that Bill thought he had hundreds of hours left on the blades. If you do not have accurate logs, intimantely know the person who sold you such blades how are you to know how much time is left on the set. ?

My tandem has a 2x4 mast. Bug guts and slight tracking, and centering leaves one to chase stick shake no matter what. Sometimes its right on and everything is smooth. Other times its not so good so you chase it..

One drawback to assy and dissassy a rotor set for travel...

TOM: If I were an experimental aircraft builder outside the norm of certified aircraft production I do not know if I would hide behind the "industry" practice of charging a premium for your messups. I can agree with the original owner bit but the product is what it is and in my honest opinion a defect is a defect regardless of who owns what when. There could be legal issues that cloud the legal admisibility of having a second or third owner sign a statement raf wants out of you when you send in the hub bar for update but overall I would rather tell a widow that, hey we did the update giving the rotor more strength and its not our fault that....

Did lycoming just have its ass handed to it to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars over a crankshaft issue they tried to blame on thexton ? Tell me how many lunches and paid staff they could have instead of paying for widows and funerals.....

in my opinion its just seems to be a reoccuring theme with RAF how their best customers seem to go sour when they get a taste of their "customer service".....

for the cost of a new rotor system I just think its worth it to go new or do something else.

Jonathan



Jonathan:

To my knowledge, there has only been one ref. bolt failure of the RAF blades. The fact that hundreds of RAF's are flying around the world, racking up thousands of hours with only one failure...is quite solid evidence, as to the integrity of that application...IMO.

Also, IMO, you are more cognizant of the condition and obvious lack of maintenance of the machine that suffered this failure. Am I correct?


.

[Walker]

I agree that Don's response was less than tactful. However, in the last seven years I've owned a franchise territory of a company that is based in Toronto. I've come to find that there are differences between the US and Canada that go beyond the words "huh" and "hay". What strikes us in the States as brusque and insensitive is normal for the folks north of the border. Add to that the fact that RAF is based in a tiny little farming town in the middle of freaking nowwhere and you can see that "What we're dealing with here is a failure to communicate."

That being said, I completely agree that RAF should have sold you the new hub bar for $500. They should have anticipated replacing every single hub bar out there and budgeted accordingly. In typical RAF fashion they probably didn't.

I guess we all need to remember that the name of the company is RAF Marketing Inc. They are a marketing company. Repeat business is not part of their marketing plan - therefore, ongoing customer service is not high on their priority list.

[barnstorm2]

I guess we all need to remember that the name of the company is RAF Marketing Inc. They are a marketing company. Repeat business is not part of their marketing plan - therefore, ongoing customer service is not high on their priority list.

Suddenly, everything is clearer now...

[Brent Drake]

Yes Tim, When you say marketing, Its all much clearer now.

[automan1223]

Man, that sums it up perfectly.

Boy I feel so stupid now.

what was I thinking.



Jonathan

[Harry_S.]

Jonathan; I'm sure you know that unscrupulous marketing people can usually sell anything to anybody.:(


.

[Master Roda]

I hope im not out of line by saying:

"BUY LOCAL"

I support my local community by shopping close to home when I can, I get better service, and product. I hope you do to.

[scottessex]

Support the Mom and Pops!
By the way I'll sell you a smoker kit or an adjustable trim control!:D :D

[Aussie_Paul]

Support the Mom and Pops!
By the way I'll sell you a smoker kit or an adjustable trim control!:D :D

Scott, I will need a smoker kit very soon.

Email me at paulbruty@tpg.com.au to arrange a sale.

Aussie Paul.:)

[scottessex]

Dang right ya will!:D

[Master Roda]

oddly enough I'm interested as well. Could you send me info and quote please?Thanks Scott.

jon@sportcopter.com