Power: The Enstrom does much better in high density altitude conditions given that it is turbo charged. On a hot, humid Texas day near max gross weight, I would have to manage power very carefully in the Brantly. I could not do max performance take offs and had to do fairly shallow angle standard take offs. I also think the tail rotor authority on the Enstrom is better. I never had an issue in my Brantly, but others have reported occasional lack of tail rotor authority. The additional power in the Enstrom did not come at the expense of much more fuel. Burn rate is only about 1 more gallon per hour, if that, in the Enstrom.
Flexibility: A three seat is of course much more flexible than a two seat. However, I can count on one hand the number of times I had three people in my Enstrom. I don't think the passenger in the middle seat would be very comfortable on a long flight. For two people, the Enstrom is very spacious and I like the seating position much better, seats are higher and not sitting on the floor like in the Brantly.
Maintenance: I spent a lot more on maintenance in my Brantly than the Enstrom. I had a quick start one time when I installed the wrong starter and it ruined two blades. Ouch! The fact you have to manually engage the clutch in the Enstrom is a much safer and more reliable system. I do like the fact the Brantly has a rotor brake, but the blades are so high on the Enstrom it is not as necessary, but for safety operating manual still says not to enter or exit while blades are turning.
Fun: To be honest, the Brantly is more fun to fly. The Enstrom is more work. My Enstrom is not correlated, although newer models are. You can add correlation to my model, but it is about $7K for parts. So, there is a lot of throttle work, and more pedal adjustments to make. Also, you need to make regular adjustments to the trim on the Enstrom unless you have more muscles than I do
. With the Brantly, I set the trim and forgot about it. Practicing autos is much easier in the Brantly since you just have to lower the collective since it is correlated. With the Enstrom, you have to chop the throttle and I worry about getting RPMs to low on the engine. Just something else to worry about. But like anything else, it becomes second nature once you get used to it.Ron Spiker has a lot of experience in Enstroms, including helping me fly mine to Texas from New York. He also just made a coast-to-coast trip in an Enstrom, so Ron, please weigh in as well.
Steve
