Mini-500 Master Blueprints on eBay

I don't see how this will Stir the Pot, Dennis is the one selling it,and he IS right here on the Forum. That is pretty intresting.
 
What is he moving onto now? Is he getting out of building flying machines?
 
What is he moving onto now? Is he getting out of building flying machines?

Mike,

Dennis is building UAV helicopters last I heard, he did a post about them awhile back.
 

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Here are some thoughts:

It only is the machined parts, apparently? You would not have enough information to build Mini-500 helicopters, but you would have enough to make some service parts for the existing fleet. Talk to Dennis about his experience before deciding to build kit helicopters.

Dennis retains intellectual property in the design and if you make parts for sale you must pay him a royalty (that's stated in the listing).

Dennis has good eBay feedback, if you use toolhaus.org to get negatives beyond what the eBay interface readily reports, you will see one negative:

http://toolhaus.org/cgi-bin/negs?User=chopperdudeusa&Dirn=Received+by

But the guy that gave him a neg was a deadbeat who stiffed Dennis. Look at his negs to see the story:

http://toolhaus.org/cgi-bin/negs?User=randy_red&Dirn=Received+by

I post those toolhaus links because toolhaus is an excellent tool for users to see the long-term negatives of eBay traders, which certainly informs my buying -- based on this info, for example, I'd trade with Dennis with confidence, but probably avoid any bids on, and cancel any bids from, that other guy randy_red, even though he hasn't got any negs recently. It's less important that someone has negative feedback than it is to figure out why and what the pattern is. While Dennis's ID only shows positive feedback now, I bet it hurt his auctions when that deadbeat slimed him before. But if people checked toolhaus they can figure out the pattern and realize it's just one guy with a bad record attacking somebody.

I probably wouldn't buy an aircraft or car off eBay, but I've bought everything from a PalmPilot to vintage musical instruments to an NOS ZF 6-speed transmission, and it's been 100% positive for me. And I'll admit that I have been cruising eBay for aircraft and for a replacement for my work truck, I just haven't pulled the trigger on a bid.

So it's a good idea to remember this URL if you trade on eBay:

http://toolhaus.org/

Good luck to all of you!

Oh, one more thing -- Dennis is right about the economy. Frankly, if you have a good idea, it's always a good time to start a business. Businesses started in boom times often fail. Apple Computer and Microsoft were started and grew explosively during the dreadful economy of the late 1970s with inflation and interest rates in the 15-20% area.

cheers

-=K=-
 
The reason I was hesitant regarding the stirring of the pot is - I assume - obvious. Per my limited and recent study of kit helos, the seller in question and his flying machine are perhaps the single greatest controversy in the history of homebuilt aviation. Some, I suspect, would lump this book of plans into the same category as the Catalyst in the TV series "Heroes", the Necronomicon in "Evil Dead", or maybe the Ark in Raiders. On the flip side, perhaps this little book is going to be someone else's Excalibur, Fountain of Youth, Holy Grail, etc.

No matter. Ain't my concern as I won't be bidding. Best of luck to whoever ends up purchasing.
 
my view is, if you had the tooling to make the parts,even if you gave Dennis a % of the sales,you would probably make some money as there are alot of mini 500 out there still that could use parts and could be upgraded to fly
 
What happened to Mini 500s? Short Version

What happened to Mini 500s? Short Version

Anybody out there able to explain in one easy paragraph why this aircraft disappeared from the market. If its as good as Mr. Fetters says in those plans and the videos, seems like it would be a big hit still today. I wanted one of those many years ago, but couldn't afford it at the time. Still looks sharp! What was the "weak link" so to speak?

RB
 
My one paragraph answer is:

"The weak link was the Rotax 582 2-stroke engine, it was just too tempramental for the average Joe to sort it out. Yes, if all machines were maintained by Revolution, they would all still be flying. Once sold, the responsability went from trained professionals, to some backyard spanner macks. Not all could keep it from seizing up."

My other answer is: "RB, I know once I hit this "post reply" button, a storm of arguments will erupt. However, I will tell you my personal opinion of the whole story.

Firstly, Dennis tried, and succeeded, to produce a low priced helicopter, one that everyone could afford. It was simple, could be assembled in a very short time, a glorified Meccano kit ( no pun intended towards the heli kit). What happened next, is guy's with too much spare cash, and a dream of flying a heli, bought the kit on a Friday, built it on a Saturday, and tried to fly it on a Sunday. Now, I'm going to generalise now, it attracted a customer base that had no or little heli flying experience, neither a lot of aircraft building experience. With a heli, you can fire it up in your back yard, that's what a lot were doing.

Next situation, the new kit did go through some teething problems, the worst one being the 2-stroke engine it used. It was the best available at the time, better engines only became available much later. The Rotax 582 was prone to sudden stoppages. Yes, a big problem, but the company did overcome that issue as well, more about it later. Now, a low time heli pilot, with a machine that he had no dual emergency training in, most autorotations after engine stoppages did not make it. The famous one, the high time pilot killed, well, he most probably used his turbine type procedure, but it did not work. I bet you, put a high time turbine heli pilot in a Robbie 22, without practising auto's beforehand, and ask him to perform one, I bet most will fail it too. So, the low time pilots could not handle the emergencies. That's what you get if you just jump into a single seater heli.

By now, the product had a bad name, but there still was not a history of component failures causing the deaths. An engine failure does not mean certain death, the heli's could be auto'd. Yes, there were frame cracks at first, bearings packing up, but those were all corrected. They never lead to structural in-flight failures.

By now you had a lot of negative publicity, and a couple of guy's, with no Mini-500 experience, fuelling the fire of negative publicity. But take note, all the time, there were guy's out there, all over the world, flying them without hassles. Still today, there are some hardcore Mini-500 owners, keeping their machines flying. Flawlessly !!

Another problem that occured, the company was so busy with production, they did not spend enough time getting the fixes out sooner. Dennis might take offence here, but hindsight has 20/20 vision. So the negatives were piling up too fast. But go and research it, the AD's and SB's were all issued, adressing all areas of complaints, but guy's were not implementing them. By the way, go and check out Robinsons history, or Rotorway's history, same things happened, Revolution was not unique to these problems.

I think it was a flood in Missouri that forced Dennis to take a loan from the state SBA, to get the factory up and running again. This might have been the fatal bullet. At a critical time, when Dennis was expanding the design to a 2-seater, some of those negative people managed to convince the SBA, that Dennis was going under. Yes, he seemed to be under financial stress then, but he was funding the 2-seater. Yes he took deposits, but their products were going to be delivered, had he had the chance to finish it off. One day, the SBA walked into the place, convinced by some compeditors that the business was going bust, so they wanted their investment loan back. Dennis once told me, he was locked out of the factory at once. So, the company was broken up, the tooling sold off. Dennis never had the chance to make it work again. People blame him until today, that he stole peoples money, the deposits of the 2-seat Voyager. It's the SBA that are to blame, they closed the shop down, they did not re-imburse the depositors, Dennis was shut out of the business, he could not pay anyone back. Hey man, anyone that gives money to an investor, you have to give him the chance to make it work, not pull the rug out under him, while his working on it.

I still say, the Mini-500 is all what it was set out to be, an affordable single seat homebult heli kit. Don't complain about, for example, not having needle roller bearings in the control linkages, if you want that, go and buy a certified version at 100 times the price. If the buyers were expecting to get certified heli quality, for $25K of pricetag, it's their mistake. The same goes for gyro's, airplane kit's. The truth is, it flew, it still flies well, just a shame it is no longer in production. It was of sufficient quality, to be operated as a homebuilt heli. You had to do servicing, comply with AD's and SB's, things that some people did not do. They paid with their lives.

Another issue was people were judging Dennis's personality, not his product. I did not know him then, I'm forming my own opinion here, from reading all about his past. He was younger, and seemed to have a strong A-type personality. So what if he was like that, he was on top of the world, having produced a heli kit. It seemed this personality clashes became personal to some, and it boiled over in the product being dragged through the dirt. Until today, there are guy's that cannot wait to get the daggers out, when he says something. Unfortunately, he then responds harsh to their comments, making the situation blow up most of the times. Can you blame him for responding like that, having been verbally abused for decades?

So what killed it, it's the negative publicity, a feeding frenzy of jealous people. Today, with better 4-stroke powerplants being available, if anyone should ressurrect the production line, he'd make a fortune. If I had financial backing, I'd do it in a flash.

I have one, I'm as happy as a pig in Palestine with it !!
 
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Note that Dennis himself isn't trying to bring it back to the market, that's a big clue in itself as to it's viability - whatever else you say about him, he's always been a great marketing guy.

If there was a bunch of money to be made off that design he'd be selling it again himself.
 
I have one, I'm as happy as a pig in Palestine with it !!
can you post some pics of your? I always have liked the Mini 500, tell us more about you and your Mini, would love to see some pics of it flying at altitude and not just a pic of it hover, like most pics ya see.

You are right on many points. just think what the Mini would be like if it had one of these new yamaha sled engines in it.

as for what you said about Rotorways, you are dead on right,most people have no clue to just how many problems they have. not to mention most the old Scorpions where to underpowered to fly. so of course you never heard of bouched autorotations. got to be flying first. most ya heard about with Rotorways are roll overs.

I mean for what it is worth at least the Mini 500 videos did show it being flown higher then 200 feet up.

some day I would still love to own one.
 
Brett s,

Dennis understands the homebuilt heli scene, and that's just why he won't bring the Mini-500 back. He realised, you cannot please those that don't want to be pleased. There will always be those crackpots out there that will crucify his heli, does'nt matter how good it is. It's too much of an uphill battle to fight. Then, he has decided to do another thing, see post #5 above. Other than that, he has been developing other projects as well, out of the public eye.

If someone else got a heli kit going, based on the Master Design Drawings he is selling, it will sure be a hit. He's done 99% of the work, the only thing that has to happen, is to replace the engine with a less tempremental one, maybe built another enclosure, and put it into production. If I had the financial backing, I would do it.
 
Exactly. The induced power to hover a Mini-500 is 36 Hp; the induced power to hover a Mosquito is 22 HP.

Induced power is that chargeable to the generation of downwash; total power for hovering can be nearly twice as much.
 
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HobbyCAD

Thank you very much for your post #10. I think you said it very well.

Glad that you are on the forum , we welcome any Mini 500 experience you wish to share with us.

Around 1995 I called Revolution about a kit , they immediately directed me to a dealer (distributor) in nearby Winnipeg who immediately informed me to hold off for a while until the mast upgrade was sorted out. I appreciated the 'honesty' from the factory and the dealer. By the time I wanted to order , the factory was closed. The Winnipeg distributor flew his Mini 500 for years and probably it is still flying even now. I should give him a call.

Thanks again for your input HobbyCAD. Much appreciated.

Arnie
Bell 47 G2
 
Arnie, Thanks for your vote, I do enjoy this forum very much.

Animal, my machine is currently a basketcase of spares. I have started converting it to an open cockpit 2-seat design. I intend re-powering to a Mid-West Engines AE100R, or to a Rotax 912S. Why the open cockpit, just ask the open frame Gyro pilots, and the trike ultralight pilots, nothing beats the open air in flight. I have total confidence in the Mini-500 mechanics. If my version flies as expected, I might think of getting rights to the Mini-500 components used, and putting the heli into production.

I've proven the expected performance to myself in theory, I've published my performance calculator on the forum a couple of weeks ago. I'm now doing the component stress analysis, (doing what Dennis has already done). I'll share those results as well. I expect the new airframe to be ready for pictures, first quarter of 2009.

Regards,

Francois
 
Note that Dennis himself isn't trying to bring it back to the market, that's a big clue in itself as to it's viability - whatever else you say about him, he's always been a great marketing guy.
If there was a bunch of money to be made off that design he'd be selling it again himself.

It's very perspicuous of you to say such a thing, especially when you don't have any idea of what you are talking about. But, hence, the problem with how this bunch of misinformation got started anyway. People making presumptions and spreading untrue roomers.

Dennis Fetters himself has his own reasons for not bringing it back, none of which is anything close to what you just said.

The reason why I'm not reviving it is simple....

1. Because I don't want to deal with people like you, and that's because the major majority of people simply are unable to assemble a kit helicopter correctly, fly it correctly, and maintain it correctly.
I have only built 3 Mini-500's, and all 3 of them flew great with little problems. All the others were exactly the same parts, just assembled by other people.

2. I already did that. I want to do other things now.

Please, don't talk for me, I prefer to do that for myself, thank you.
 
Exactly. The induced power to hover a Mini-500 is 36 Hp; the induced power to hover a Mosquito is 22 HP.

Induced power is that chargeable to the generation of downwash; total power for hovering can be nearly twice as much.

Well sure, if I would have been willing to forgo things like a real geared transmission for belt drives and such, I could have also made it lighter. But I chose to build a full-size helicopter that would have a sizable cockpit that fit large people, and finish it off with a full cover. No shortcuts.

But even then, the Mini-500 still has better performance figures and a demonstrated higher speed than the newer Mosquito.

Besides, the Mosquito violates my control patent, as anyone that sold to the USA, or purchased in the USA is about to find out, the manufacturers, owners, dealers and the distributors alike are responsible for and accountable for the infringement.
 
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