There were about 500 mini 500's sold and about 100 to 150 flying.
There are at least 11 deaths as of three years ago that I know of
flying the mini 500. You calculate the odds.

Mr Fetters claims the design is fine however when a 60,000 hour
professional helicopter pilot dies in one I took notice. I have lost
three friends to this machine.
John

On 8 Dec 2006 20:09:29 -0800, "wavy" wrote:

JohnO wrote:
Hi,

Can someone point me to any official accident statistics that would
demonstrate the relative accident rates of various classes of certified
and experimental helos? Specifically I would want to exclude any
accidents that were pilot error or failure of maintenance. and only
consider accidents where there was a design fault

I'm interested to know how safe the design is on the various kit helos,
in particular for Rotorway in the KISS turbine version.

It concerns me that a lot of the luminaries of the kit helicopter world
such as Schramm and Bedo have died in accidents, but I'm not sure if
the reasons were faults in the aircraft or pilot error.

Cheers,
JohnO

Just look up Mini 500 in the NTSB database.

I think that might dissuade you from at least one possibitlity....
=WaVy