Thriving After Rebirth

Founded in 1959 by mining engineer Rudolph "Rudy" Enstrom and rescued from bankruptcy in 2022 by Sweetwater Music founder Chuck Surack, Enstrom Helicopter Corporation is an American designer and manufacturer of piston and turbine-engine helicopters. The company is based at Michigan’s Menominee–Marinette Twin County Airport (MNM).

On 30 January 2023, the first specimen of Enstrom’s new 480B helicopter model took flight, thereby heralding in the mighty howl and burned-kerosine smell of the machine’s Rolls-Royce M250-C20W turboshaft engine that Enstrom Helicopter Corporation had—in the literal and metaphorical senses—risen.

On 08 March 2023, Enstrom proudly made public its development of a new RPM governor for the company’s piston helicopter models. Designed to aid pilots in maintaining rotor RPMs, the new governor functions by dint of a digital controller and fast-acting servo-motor.

Enstrom’s VP of Engineering Bill Taylor stated: “The pilot can set the RPM anywhere in the green, and then beep it up and down within the allowable range, just like on a turbine helicopter. During autorotation training, it will automatically maintain the RPM just below the green. During the power recovery, it will quickly and reliably increase engine RPM and marry the needles, meaning the student and the instructor won’t ‘forget to roll the throttle back on’, and the engine won’t overspeed during recovery.”

Speaking to the safety, reliability, and convenience of the both the new rotor-governor and the Enstrom helicopter line, Incoming Enstrom CEO Todd Tetzlaff remarked: Enstroms are known to be some of the safest and easiest flying helicopters in their class, and the existing correlator system is a big part of that. This new digital governor takes it to a whole new level.”

The governor system will be available on new 280FX and F28F helicopters and available as a retrofit to any in-service 28-volt 280FX and F28F models.

Notwithstanding his surname’s enduring synonymousness with the marque, Rudy Enstrom knew little of helicopter design. His young company, in point of fact, was sustained to an extensive degree by outside aerospace experts and generous investors. By the time Enstrom’s first helicopter, the venerable F-28, was in production, Rudy had been ousted in person—if not in name—from the company he founded.

Between 1965 and 2011, Enstrom built over 1,100 helicopters in both piston and turbine iterations. Throughout those decades, the company offered three models: the F-28, the more aerodynamic 280, and the turbine-powered 480—each with its own variants.

A hallmark of Enstrom's designs is the lack of exposed main-rotor pitch-change-linkages. Contrary to convention, subject mechanisms are housed within the aircraft’s hollow main-rotor shaft. The unique architecture reduces aerodynamic drag, and renders the linkages less susceptible to external hazards the likes of bird-strike, powerlines, or FOD.

In January 2022 Enstrom declared bankruptcy due to what the company’s management described as “several financial difficulties.” Technical support for Enstrom customers ceased, and the Menominee factory was shuttered. At the time of its closure the company employed only thirty workers.

In May 2022 Surack Enterprises purchased Enstrom.

Years prior to adding Enstrom to his portfolio, Chuck Surack had learned to fly helicopters in an Enstrom 280. Impressed with the machine and the company by which it had been built, Surack purchased a 480.

Of Enstrom as a whole, Surack remarked: “When the company became available, I knew how good the employees were … it’s the safest helicopter in the world. If you look at the safety record it’s really, really safe, and I just knew there was an opportunity to improve the company and restore it, and take it on to the next level.”

FMI: www.enstromhelicopter.com