Bell 407 Overview - One of the Best Entry Level (Cheaper) High Performance Helicopters. S6|E2

What's up aviation enthusiasts? I'm super excited because today we're taking a look at definitely one of the best all-around entry-level but still has high performance helicopter and might even be one of the best skiing or snowboarding helicopters there is, which I'll get into towards the end of this video. And whether you're a first-time viewer or a returning viewer, welcome. And I just want to apologize for this intro being a little bit longer than usual. But I just wanted to explain that I've been going by the name James Cooper, which was actually originally James Bodie. And James Bodie was a name I made up for making this channel. But I decided just to stick to my regular name, which is Cameron Cooper. And this is Relative Motion, a channel all about transportation where we're focusing on mostly helicopters right now. But if you are new here and you like this video and you want to see more videos about helicopters or even other awesome upcoming vehicles, I hope you consider subscribing below, which really helps more of these videos come your way. And here we go. The Bell 407 is truly a very capable helicopter. Being still fairly low entry in the world of turbine helicopters, this is a great performer. Starting not only with the fact I think this is one of the safest helicopters you can get, and that's because the Bell 407 is based on the Bell 206, which was the episode before this one. And if you want to know more about the Bell 206, I'll link that video down in the description. And like I said in the Bell 206 video, it is certainly a well-established design. Having so many of the Bell 206s flying around, there are also a lot of Bell 407s flying around. And I really do think this is one of the safer families of helicopters. A major improvement that the Bell 407 has over the Bell 206 is it has twice as many rotor blades, giving it a four-bladed rotor hub, and is certainly much more desirable. Among other things, getting rid of mass bumping, being a faster helicopter. The great thing about a four-bladed helicopter, and to me the Bell family in particular, with four-bladed rotors, they are really easy to fold up. Because you only have to remove a few blade pins and the blades will fold up very similar to how the blades would be on a two-bladed rotor. And then the last advantage over the Bell 206, if it's not a long ranger, is the Bell 407 seats two more people in the back, having another row of seats in front of the rear row that faces aft. Now there's not as many versions of the 407 as there is of the 206. One version to maybe be aware of is what is called the Eagle 407 HP, and this has an upgraded Honeywell engine that has an additional 200 horsepower. You give it somewhere around a thousand horsepower total. I'm really not sure of the performance increases, even though I'm sure there are some, beyond this 200 horsepower increase. But I guess if it was me, I'd probably stick to the Allison engine that the Bell helicopter comes with, since this is a really popular helicopter engine. Just like the Bell 206, the Allison engines are really well proven, and it seems to me that the 800 horsepower this helicopter already has gives it some pretty good performance already. So I think I would just stick to my Allison engine in this application. The Bell 407 eventually turned into the Bell 427, which is basically just a twin engine version of this helicopter, and is a really great light twin aircraft that I plan on doing a video on soon, when I get into twin turbine engine helicopters. And the last version of the 407, I think worth noting, is what I would assume is the most modern version of this helicopter, the 407G. This version comes with the Garmin 1000 system, which if you watch this channel, you've probably heard me mention these Garmin avionics packages, and these are a little more rare in helicopters than jets or light airplanes. So it's pretty cool to see the Bell 407 come with a G1000 right from the factory. And the kind of cool and interesting thing the Bell 407 excels at is using it for heli-skiing, which if you're unfamiliar with it, is basically where skiers and snowboarders get in a helicopter and have a crazy amount of access to all sorts of terrain that's not the typical terrain that you would find at a ski resort serviced by a ski lift. And you truly can reach some incredible destinations. But I'm just going to go into why this helicopter in particular excels at this. There are several factors leading to this, but the biggest advantage of this helicopter, it has such a high altitude that you can land in ground effect, which as far as I know, is going to be the stat that really matters for landing on top of mountains, so skiers can ski down. But if you are a helicopter pilot, and you disagree with this, I'd be interested to hear what else matters down in the comments below. And then the other two, maybe less obvious features, that I believe generally lead this helicopter to be great for skiing as well, is it has skids, which obviously by themselves are not great for landing in snow. But I would think are the best option for when you actually attach skis to a helicopter, which I'm sure this helicopter has an option for. And it's definitely something you want for a helicopter used for heli skiing. And then the last feature commonly on helicopters used for this, is they'll have a basket on the side that I would imagine is also attached to the skids. And this is very important as well, because it gives you a great way to carry all the skis or snowboards to the top of the mountain with you, and not have to put them in the cabin or a cargo compartment, even if they would fit, which they probably wouldn't. And this helicopter, for being fairly popular in general, and in particular being popular as a helicopter for heli skiing, it would be fairly easy to find one of these baskets to install on one of these helicopters. Since in the world of aviation, you can't build your own and just stick it on there. Now if you missed any stats, I'm gonna play through those real quick at the end of this video, like I do with all the overview videos on this channel. Hey, I appreciate you so much checking out this video and making it to the end here. And I hope you aviation enthusiasts look forward to an upcoming video on this channel, where I'm going to go into an overview of why helicopters have different amount of rotor blades, and of course the pros and cons of each. So stay tuned for that one. And until next time, I'm Cameron Cooper, and you've been watching Relative Motion.