RWS 103 – Robinson Governor Operation with Richard Mornington-Sanford

Rotary Wing Show - Interviews from the Helicopter Industry

Richard Mornington-Sandford – flight instructor and engineering trainer has a long history working with the Robinson brand.

Before this episode if you told me that there was more than an hour conversation that you could get out of talking about the governor in Robinson type helicopters I would have been dubious. I was wrong!

Today we have back on the show pilot and engineer Richard Mornington-Sanford.

Richard Mornington-Sanford was an engineer in the RAF before branching out into the roles of a civilian flight instructor, licensed helicopter engineer and air accident investigator. A photo on his website has an endorsement from Frank Robinson in 1998 with at that point, 18 years of association with the Robinson Helicopter Company and its products. Richard is still conducting Robinson Pilot Flight Safety Courses around the world today. You can do the maths on the years of experience there.

Richard was last on in episode 93 where he provides probably the best coverage of carburetor icing for helicopters that I’ve ever come across. There was a lot of good feedback in emails from that episode and I’m sure this one will be similar.

We do chiefly talk about the Robinsons – R22 and R44 but there is plenty of generic governor operation content here that you can adapt to other types. If you are solely a turbine driver then I think this is good background info too and hopefully entertaining.

Richard is living in rural Malaysia so the call connection was a little spotty in places but hopefully I’ve tidied it up ok.

In this podcast we cover:

• Robinson R22 and R44 engine correlator
• Where the governor gets its signal inputs from
• Operation of the governor and its inputs at different RPM ranges
• Inter-action between turbulent conditions, the governor and carb icing
• Governor-off training for pilots
• Failure modes

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Links from this week’s episode:
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Mornington Sanford Aviation – Richard runs a number of safety and engineering courses. You can find out more on his website and there is a good collection there of blog posts that are well worth reading.

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