Bell 505 Testimonial: Rocky Mountain Rotors

The very first flight I had in a Bell 505, I was pretty impressed. It was incredibly simple.

My name is Mark Taylor, co-owner of Rocky Mountain Rotors here in Bozeman, Montana. We primarily operate Bell helicopters in our turbine fleet.

The 505 is very versatile. We have a hook on ours, so it's been a great little utility ship. If somebody calls and they're on a budget and they're not trying to break the bank, the 505 can lift quite a bit. We've done multiple high-altitude lifts with this machine.

Two winters ago, I was contacted by a research group. They were trying to date the Teton Range. They think the range is around 15 million years old, which is relatively young for a mountain range, I guess.

It's a challenging mountain because of the topography. It's very steep, very rocky, and craggy. The job was to move the group and the cargo on a long line to Delta Lake. Delta Lake sits at around 9,000 feet—9,100, I think. You go up there when it's frozen, and the temperatures were right around zero degrees Celsius.

The job was to haul the net loads and the cargo they had strapped together up to Delta Lake, where the researchers were going to be. I did it with a 125-foot long line that day. We were packing 750-pound loads up to 9,100 feet.

FADEC does a great job maintaining RPM and keeping the helicopter positioned at a stable engine and rotor RPM. I like the display. I like being able to move my eyes across it very rapidly and see, without delay, that everything is still within parameters, then get my eyes back outside where they should be.

During that Delta Lake job, to make sure we were as light as possible, I pulled the three seats out of the back of the helicopter. Even though they don't weigh much, anything counts when you're working at those extreme altitudes. We took the seats out and removed anything else from the helicopter that could be removed.

You can quickly convert it back to a passenger-carrying helicopter in no time to transport the crew.

To get that Delta Lake job down there in the Tetons, there was a company out of Salt Lake City running an AStar, and they had submitted a bid for the job. The 505 came in at a lower cost than the AStar, and we were able to secure the work.