Robinson R44

So let's kind of dive into your Hawaii mission.

Uh, you launched Rainbow Helicopters with a single Robinson R44 on Oahu, and that's a bold move for anyone.

What was the business case you made to yourself? What did year one actually look like?

Well, [chuckles] I would love to tell you that it was, like, a very large laid-out business plan, you know? Um, and, uh, um, it, it wasn't.

there was some predation control, so, like, killing hogs and, and things like that.

But a lot of the work was actually, I would fly in the R44 with this, like, the foreman of the ranch, whatever you call him, the, the head ranch guy that was-

Mm

... overseeing this property, and these properties were where people could come and lease land to hunt.

This one they want to kill."

Mm.

We would have to trailer the R44 all around to these different places, and those, in these...

I don't know if you ever saw the, have seen the R44 trailers, but you, you, when you come down, you put them in, like, these little troughs.

Whilst in the Galapagos, I realized that, man, These little electric drones, I mean, yeah, you know, they could carry 10 kilos, 20 kilos.

There's still such a gap between those little electric drones and helicopters, right? Crewed helicopters, whether it's your Robinsons, R44s, whether it's a Squirrel or Jet Ranger, whatever.

There's a big gap in between it.

So I had a bit of a...

But what was most eye-opening to me going from Iowa to South Texas was getting to take part in, first, a helicopter deer survey.

I flew my first helicopter survey in – toward the end of December of 1988, and back then, they didn't have the Robinson 22 or the Robinson 44, the two- and the four-seat helicopters.

They had a three-seat Hiller, and the pilot was in the middle operating the helicopter, and then my professor was on the right and I was on the left.

So

Our kickoff conference was at Ayres Rock and anyone who hit the targets were all gifted helicopter flights around the rock at sunset.

So that was how I found myself on a lovely Robinson R44 helicopter that afternoon.

Okay.

And where did things go wrong?

Yeah, so we develop systems or have systems ranging from our smallest 250 gram, 249 gram nano system all the way up to unmanned, uncrewed R44 and R66 helicopters.

And this move by Robinson through the acquisition, but also towards unmanned R44s and R66s, I think that just really represents a significant step forward for Robinson in expanding what they have right now, a proven rotorcraft system into a scalable autonomous solution for all kinds of demanding operational environments.

And merging those two things together.

We don't think that it's either manned or unmanned.

First thing that you should do.

Yeah, what Mike is kind of alluding to there, when a client calls me with four aircraft, the one thing that the underwriters don't want is me going to them with four different aircraft to get quotes, right? Because they're busy people, right? And so this is where, you know, the knowledge of the broker, you could say, hey, you're looking at a gimbal, you're looking at an R44, you're looking at a Cirrus, and you're looking at an Epic, right? Instead of me going to Michael to get quotes, I always say, hey, this is kind of where I expect the premium to be based on what we're seeing in the market.

let's get serious on an airplane based on kind of these ranges I'm giving you.

And then let's go to Michael because if we go to him before the aircraft, he's going to get annoyed.

And so, you know, something that I'm seeing more common now is, you know, we're slinging both airplanes and helicopters.

And so I'll have a guy that has, say, a $4 million Epic and he's paying, you know, a $40,000 premium or less even to insure his Epic.

And then he goes and buys an R44 or an R66 called, we'll use an R66, a million dollar helicopter.

And, you know, his premium for that $1 million helicopter is $80,000.