Impossible Is The Wrong Word. So Is Copter.

There's no Bell/Agusta BA609 on the static line at NBAA. The only one of these pathbreaking aircraft in the world is active on flight test and can't be spared for shows.

"We're not actively marketing the 609 yet, anyway," a Bell rep told Aero-News. The multinational consortium formed by the American and Italian helicopter powers is sitting on 60 orders, with serious money in deposit on each., and they are not actively seeking more right now.

So the machine at the show isn't a machine at all; it's a mockup, which becomes clear when you slip between the crew seats and slip into the pilot's seat.

The seat you choose says a lot about where you came from. A lot of helicopter pilots pick the right, which is a convention that dates from the early days of the Sikorsky R-4B, where Igor Sikorsky sat in the left seat with his hat firmly on his head and taught military pilots to fly from the right. The convention caught on.

Airplane pilots generally pick the left seat. And that's the thing about the BA609; it's a tiltrotor convertiplane, offering some of the advantages of both a fast, pressurized twin turboprop, and those of a traditional helicopter; and it has a few disadvantages of each.

Soon a second BA609 will be flying: it's under assembly at the Agusta plant. The Bell/Agusta vision has each company assembling its own examples of the jointly developed machine for its own sales area; the sort of cooperation that has aircraft parts going back and forth across the globe was considered, but dismissed as inefficient.

One advantage of the dual production lines is that the 60-order backlog should be quickly reduced once the machine is certified. But Bell/Agusta is confident about new orders once the machine completes certification.

Another advantage of the multinational nature of the company should show up once the Agusta-built 609 is completed. Bell/Agusta has an aggressive flight test plan that will turn the seven-hour clock difference between the two plants into an advantage, through a masterful stroke of planning judo. Data gleaned by one site's test flights will be reduced and analyzed by engineers on the other site; engineers and pilots will come to work every day with some of their work magically taken care of for them.

The path to the left -- or right, depending on your background -- seat of a BA609 will be trodden by an elect few. To attend training at Bell/Agusta's Alliance Airport Tiltrotor Training Facility in Fort Worth, Texas, pilots need to bring both rotorcraft helicopter and airplane multiengine land category and class ratings, and a Commercial Pilot Certificate with an Instrument Rating -- the website says in either category, but the staff on the NBAA show floor said that instrument ratings in both categories are required. The Bell rep also said that 1500 hours total time was required.

The BA609 Pilot Qualification Course includes ground, flight simulator, and aircraft time -- at least 56 hours will be logged in the simulator and actual aircraft. The course takes about four weeks and ends with the successful pilot obtaining FAA Powered Lift category Tiltrotor class commercial or ATP rating (an owner-operator could conceivably obtain a Private Powered-Lift/Tiltrotor, and a BA609 Type Rating.

This basic course will take about four weeks. In addition, the Tiltrotor Training Facility will offer Powered Lift Instrument, CFI, and CFII ratings, recurrent training, and a whole line of maintenance courses -- after all, no technician no technology.

So, what does it feel like? I slid into the pilot's seat -- for the record, I picked left -- of the mockup. Most of it is a rudimentary reproduction of the planned Collins ProLine 21 avionics, but not the controls. I can easily get the feel of the cyclic and collective. They fall right to hand where they are in a helicopter, which is what the machine flies like in hovering flight.

In forward flight, the collective goes dead and the cyclic flies the machine with ailerons and elevator; it's a normal control stick. The nacelles have rotated into a horizontal position and the anti-torque pedals now act as rudder pedals. Decelerating through translational lift, the controls revert to helicopter mode; the collective comes alive. The controls are entirely fly-by-wire.

Pilots who have flown it say that the whole process is more natural than it sounds. The Bell-Boeing V-22 Osprey tiltrotor works exactly the same way. But this isn't some space-age military technology, but a sensible business aircraft. It doesn't land on as small or rough a site as some helicopters do, and it will cost more to buy, fly and insure.

And it doesn't go as fast as a bizjet does. But it does fly at impressive inter-city speeds and can still land in small enough areas to make airports superfluous. Companies need this aircraft, and if the production machines deliver on their promise, the order book will explode.

It looks like it ought to be impossible, but it isn't. It also looks like it would be extremely rewarding to fly -- but for those of us who are not Bell/Agusta test pilots, the answer remains, not now. Not for a little while yet.

FMI: www.bellagusta.com