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Robinson’s success is the stuff
of inspiration
by Bill Wagstaff
The mythos of late 20th century commerce
centers on the compelling image of an industry-defining business
being created in a garage, then going on to make it big time.
The story has been repeated so often, as in the case of Apple
Computer, Hewlett Packard and many others, that it has assumed
the level of cliche, of an apocryphal story of creation that
probably really never happened.
Except in the case of Robinson Helicopter, in which it really
did happen. And that tiny company that struggled its way into
the world as one man’s dream recently marked the sale
of its 4,000th helicopter.
The year 1973 saw Frank Robinson, a journeyman engineer and
designer who had worked at nearly every airframer in America,
make the big move to go into business for himself. Robinson
had designed a light, two-man helicopter, a personal-sized
machine with a modest price tag. He had offered it to every
manufacturer and just couldn’t marry their interest to
his dream. “Sometimes they seemed interested but didn’t
have the money. Other times, they just couldn’t envision
a small, personal helicopter,” Robinson said Sunday afternoon
in an informal chat with HAI Convention News.
During his time with Cessna Aircraft, Robinson had been involved
in that manufacturer’s obscure Skyhook program, an attempt
at a personal, owner-flown rotorcraft that resulted in a small
production run but unfortunately failed to engage the interest
of the buying public. But Robinson couldn’t let go of
the idea of a small, affordable helicopter.
So in his home in Palos Verdes, Calif., a dream began to take
flight. “We took all the furniture out of the dining
room,” he recalled, “and replaced it with drafting
tables. The garage was the shop where we produced some of
the components and started assembly of the first prototype.”
Robinson had a partner in those days and $150,000 in seed
money. He also had a handful of employees who were willing
to work under the terms of a payment scheme that could best
be described as “creative.”
“We had a few good people who had worked with me at other
companies and who wanted to be part of what became the R22.
But I couldn’t afford to pay them. So the deal was that
they would get the same pay that they had received in their
previous job, but only one-third of that would be cash. The
rest would be in the form of stock in the company. Later,
I had to change that to equity in the company.”
Robinson decided to name his new machine the R22 and denies
the rumor that the number was supposed to reflect hopes to
price the helo at $22,000. “No, that was never the intention,”
Robinson recalled with a grin. “The name came from the
fact that the FAA application for the type certification demanded
a model number and I had to quickly think one up. I knew it
was going to be an R-something and I wanted it to be a series
of numbers that would advance incrementally in a logical way.
You know, like 22, 44, 66, and so forth.” (The initial
asking price for the R22 was in “the low forties,”
as Robinson remembers. Today it’s $160,000.)
Living hand to mouth for nearly two years and burning through
that initial $150,000, Robinson’s team eventually had
a prototype R22. Four years later, confounding the experts,
they had a type-certified helicopter, a design willing and
able to be sold. Along the way, the company “kinda went
broke,” as Robinson recalls, but was saved by an investor,
the first of many.
The year 1980 saw the beginning of R22 deliveries, and the
beginning of a string of accidents attributed to main rotor
blades striking and, in some cases, severing the R22’s
tail boom, almost always with fatal results. Those were days
Robinson recalls as “one disaster after another.”
The FAA demanded what amounted to a full recertification of
the blade design, Robinson started a stringent in-house pilot
training program for its customers, the market went through
a recession and the company saw what became a series of investors
put money into the rotorcraft builder only to take it back
out not much later.
Looking back at those days, the engineer who daydreamed about
an affordable helo found himself spending more time as a fundraiser.
“Life became a series of meetings with venture capitalists,”
Robinson recalled. “Banks would find them for me, the
helicopter network would find them for me. It finally boiled
down to a doctor who had invested in one of the early answering
machines and hence made a lot of money. There was Savin of
the copier business, a major competitor of Xerox and a major
helicopter enthusiast, and the Kaufman Brothers, big investors
from New York. The Kaufmans were tough but good.”
Robinson desperately needed that steady support because the
early 1980s were nearly proving the company’s undoing.
A series of lawsuits were laid at the company’s doorstep
and, together with the continuing rotor design controversy,
sales were off. Things looked bleaker than ever for Robinson
Helicopters. Twelve years had passed since those first designs
had been committed to paper in Robinson’s living room.
True, helicopters had been sold, but now sales were dropping
off.
Then, in 1986, everything turned around. Sales surged. The
company made a profit and was able to pay off creditors. After
13 years, Robinson was in the black. It was time to start
the next design.
“I had been designing the R44 in my mind since the mid-80s,”
he said. “I knew the R22 needed a follow-on and now that
we had the breathing room, it was time to go ahead with a
four-seater.”
The R44 first flew in 1990 and got its FAA nod two years later.
Initial public reception was favorable, customers signed up
and deliveries began.
Then disaster struck. On July 31, 1993, an R44 went down not
long after takeoff from the airport in El Monte, Calif., killing
three of its occupants in a fiery crash. Lawsuits flew, investigations
dragged on and things “got ugly,” as Robinson remembered,
so ugly that he suddenly did an about face in the marketing
of his newest helicopter, barring sales to U.S. customers
so that Robinson would avoid the vicissitudes of American
liability laws. That policy applied for two years while a
carefully selected population of customers amassed operational
experience with the design. Finally, Robinson released the
R44 for American domestic consumption. Sales, while steady,
were not spectacular.
It took the introduction of hydraulic controls on the R44
for it really to set sales records. Which it is doing. Of
the 390 new helicopters sold by Robinson last year, 126 were
R22s while a whopping 264 were R44s. The numbers represent
a 40-percent sales boost over 1999. “It’s the hydraulic
controls that did it,” he maintained. “We really
didn’t think they’d make such a difference. We were
so used to the way the old system flew. The other day I had
to fly one of our older non-hydraulic helicopters and I was
astounded at the difference. It was like the difference between
manual and power steering.”
That simple addition has made Robinson’s dream–the
one he first dreamed decades ago of mass-producing a widely
affordable helicopter–come true.
Is there an R66 out there somewhere? “Not yet,”
Robinson said. “I’m studying the market, trying
to see where it’s going. There isn’t much more you
can do with the currently available piston-engine technology,
but turbines are expensive. So I’m undecided.”
After all these years, what’s in the personal plans of
an energetic 71-year-old engineer, financier, entrepreneur?
“I couldn’t see retiring,” he said. “I’ve
got the best hobby in the world.”
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