This Tiny Helicopter Is Basically A Flying Erector Set You Can Operate Without A License, And I’m In Love

Ultralight aviation is a fascinating thing. Strip enough weight, power, and capacity from your aircraft and you can sell it to the public as something the average Joe can fly without formal flight instruction and without a license. Most ultralights are adorably tiny planes and powered parachutes, but if you like rotorcraft there are some wild helicopters out there. One of them is the Mirocopter SCH-2A, basically a big Erector Set that weighs just 249 pounds and is powered by an adorable engine. It costs less than the average new car, too, and I’m totally in love.

I first wrote about the Mirocopter SCH-2A two years ago when I was a fresh face at The Autopian. Back then, the Mirocopter SCH-2A had only just reached our shores, so all I had to go off of was a set of low-resolution pictures posted online. However, it’s here, it’s real, and you can buy it for just $37,500. Yes, that’s a real powered flying machine for less than the price of the average new car transaction nowadays.

I got to play around with one of these baby helis at EAA AirVenture Oshkosh 2024, and now I want to fly one. In the words of old-new Top Gear, how hard can it be?

The Cheaper Way To Fly

Something I’ve learned over the years is that aviation can get really expensive. Let’s use my own journey as an example. As of current, it costs me $440 for two hours of flight lessons. That money covers the rental of a Cessna 172, the fuel for its tanks, and the time of my instructor.

Admittedly, I do get a pretty decent return for my dollar, but the money adds up quickly. You need at least 40 hours for your private pilot certificate. That’s a minimum of $8,800 in flying and instruction time. Now, you don’t just magically get your license at that 40-hour mark. You have to be tested and ready, and that point will be different for everyone. You may not get your license until 60 hours, for some even longer. This is why training institutes that are being honest with you will tell you it’ll take between $10,000 and $20,000 to get your license. It’s highly dependent on your own skill and learning curve.

Anyway, once you do spend that kind of cash on getting your license, now you’re going to want to fly something. The easy way would be to rent a plane. However, you’ll likely be paying something like $160 per hour for something like a 50-year-old Cessna. That adds up quickly if you want to fly a lot!

Okay, how about buying a plane? Let’s say you want a basic Cessna 150, a little cutie that’s easy to fly and the backbone of many training centers. That’ll run you $40,000 and up if you want a decent one. If you want something with more capability, like the also easy-to-fly Cessna 172, well a good one of those are worth $100,000 and up nowadays. Even some of the oldest 172s out there still ask $50,000 and up.

Now, you could go weird and really old like an Ercoupe 415. I’ve seen some of those for less than $20,000, and that’s the plane I want to fly when I get my license. However, Ercoupes are pretty small inside and have low useful loads, so like an Alfa Romeo 4C Spider, these planes are usually best as solo deals unless you and your passenger are lightweights.

What I’m getting at here is if you take the typical path to becoming a pilot, you’ll be spending some decent money on your hobby. One way to save a ton of dough is to go with an ultralight. In the United States, these aircraft fall under FAA Part 103, which opens up the skies to adventurous aviators without a license.

Now, some of you are gritting your teeth, but ultralights are highly restrictive. Unpowered ultralights have to weigh less than 155 pounds while powered ones are still a svelte 254 pounds empty. These aircraft can weigh a little more when equipped with floats and safety equipment, but the general idea is that they are properly tiny.

Size isn’t the only restriction, either. Ultralights are limited to 5 gallons of fuel, cannot fly faster than 55 knots, and cannot seat more than a single occupant. Further, ultralight pilots cannot fly at night, cannot fly in controlled airspace, and cannot operate over populated cities, towns, settlements, or open-air gatherings of people.

In other words, ultralights are largely stuck to flying over rural areas where the worst-case scenario will largely impact just the pilot or maybe some cattle.

If you follow those rules, you gain access to some adorable and fun flying machines. Many ultralights are simple affairs like powered parachutes or powered paraglider trikes. You also get fixed-wing ultralights that are more or less flying scaffolding with fabric wings, and some people have gone as far as to build ultralights that look like bigger fixed-wing aircraft, just aggressively scaled-down.

Then there are electric vertical takeoff and landing aircraft like the Pivotal Helix, which also slides into the ultralight category.

If you’re a rotorcraft nut, I have good news for you! Among the handful of ultralight helicopters is the Mirocopter SCH-2A, and its entire goal is to be the cheapest and lightest new helicopter money can buy.

The Mirocopter SCH-2A is the work of Slovenian engineer Miroslav Črv. His company, Mirocopter, claims that the SCH-2A is “one of the lightest manned coaxial helicopters in the world.” Miroslav has been working on this project for well over 12 years and there are YouTube videos out there of the SCH-2A flying around.

In 2022, Mirocopter was only just getting set up in America. Miroslav partnered up with Mark Rumsey of RotoTrek LLC and Andrey Vegger of CFX Aero LLC for American distribution of the choppers. Since then, Vladimir Kurilov of Scout Aero became a third distributor. The three distributors cover Florida, California, and Pennsylvania, respectively, so that covers a wide spread of potential people who could pick one of these up. It took a while to get shipments going, but you can actually buy an SCH-2A.

In my last entry, I also explained how this type of helicopter works:

The Mirocopter SCH-2A is a coaxial helicopter. What that means is that you get a pair of helicopter rotors mounted one above the other and driven by concentric driveshafts. They have the same axis of rotation, but turn in opposite directions.

When a helicopter’s rotor blades turn, torque is exerted in the opposite direction of the rotor. In the helicopters that you might be used to seeing, a tail rotor is used to counteract the torque. Without that tail rotor, you’ll likely start spinning around.

Here, the rotor spinning in the opposite direction provides the countering force. The basic concept of coaxial rotors has actually been around for over 200 years. One example of this is a device made by Mikhail V. Lomonosov in 1754 that used coaxial rotors to lift instruments into the air.

The SCH-2A is powered by the Fiate MZ202, a Chinese engine with an electric starter, a generator, and dual ignition for redundancy. This engine is said to produce “60+” horsepower and drives aluminum-composite rotor blades. Mirocopter also notes that the leading edges of the rotor blades are anodized aluminum and that stainless steel bars are used for additional reinforcement.

You command the helicopter with a standard control system involving a cyclic and collective,, plus foot pedals. The collective changes the pitch angle of the rotor blades while the cyclic manipulates the main rotor to control the directional movement of the helicopter. Meanwhile, the pedals manipulate the tail rotor’s thrust, or in this case the counterrotating rotor.

Your critical information comes by way of a configurable 7-inch color touchscreen displaying rotor and engine speed, airspeed, altitude, engine temps, air temp, battery voltage, and time. You get all of this in a package weighing just 249 pounds and eight feet tall. Other neat stats include the fact that the pilot can weigh 273 pounds and it has an endurance of about an hour. None of those fancy eVTOLs have that kind of performance. Mirocopter also says you can disassemble the chopper a little bit to get it to fit into a garage if you wanted to.

A Few Concerns

I finally got to check one of these out at this year’s AirVenture Oshkosh and it’s something else.

Mirocopter’s mission to create an aggressively lightweight helicopter becomes clear the moment you lay your eyes on the thing. Most of the SCH-2A helicopter is made out of skinny, lightweight tubing that seems to exist just to keep a basic shape. You sit down in a hard plastic seat that looks like the chairs you sat in when you were in elementary school.

The chopper seems pretty well-built, but there just isn’t much there. You’re basically sitting down on some scaffolding with only a basic seatbelt to keep you in and some gym weights to help you keep weight and balance correct. To be clear, I’m not complaining here. I was stunned by the unapologetic simplicity of the SCH-2A. Yet, it didn’t exactly feel like it was built in a shed, either. The welds looked like they were done by someone who cares about their work and the parts felt like they were all meant for the job of being on the tiny SCH-2A.

One part that gives me a ton of pause is the engine.

Fiate Aviation isn’t really a proven name in the aviation world. This company purchased another company out of Canada called Compact Radial Engines (CRE). Before that, Compact Radial Engines was known as Konig-Moto, a German company founded in 1927.

Fiate Aviation moved CRE engine production to China and while the business is apparently still in operation, it doesn’t have a working website or much in the way of aviators saying that the new engines are good. Admittedly, if I’m lifting myself off of the ground, I’d want the engine to be a proven quantity. In this video from AirVenture 2022, a spring popped off of the exhaust during a simple test hover:

Sheryl, my wonderful wife and lawyer, pointed out another potential problem after I plopped down in the hard plastic seat. The belt drive system and spinning parts are within arm’s reach, ready to maybe maim anyone who accidentally sticks their hands up too high. She also doesn’t like how the rotor blades sit close to the ground and the operator. Sheryl was at AirVenture as a form of a vacation, yet she couldn’t stop picturing ways someone could end up suing over an injury.

So, maybe the Mirocopter people should add some shields or something just for peace of mind. Promotional images show the pilot of a SCH-2A wearing a helmet, which will certainly help folks with long hair.

If you’re still interested, Mirocopter says the going rate for one of these is $37,500. For that price, you’ll get a mostly-assembled helicopter that’ll be ready to fly after a few steps. It’s shipped like a motorcycle where you sort of just need to bolt a few things on.

To illustrate how “cheap” this thing is in helicopter terms, the Composite-FX XE is sometimes called the cheapest helicopter money can buy, but it starts at $53,000 if you build it yourself and is $68,000 if you don’t want to build your flying machine.

Yep, this thing is basically half the price. But, you’re also getting about half of the helicopter and the XE won’t reduce your body weight if you look at it the wrong way.

I can be a bit of a daredevil and maybe a little stupid, so I want to fly this thing. It’s basically just strapping yourself to some flying scaffolding and I can’t stop laughing at that. Still, while you legally don’t need a license to fly this bad boy, you absolutely should get some formal flight instruction. Flying is extremely fun, but it’s also a quick way to end up on the Pilot Debrief YouTube channel if you have no idea what you’re doing. So, have fun flying this scaffolding, just try to be safe!

(Images: Author, unless otherwise noted.)