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.)
As I’ve grown old, I’ve fully accepted that my time is limited. When it ends, it will not be in a homemade helicopter. Aviation is no place to pinch pennies. Yes, I’m a licensed pilot since 1989.
I fly an aircraft I built myself, but this thing is a heck no from me.
With the seat basically on the ground to start with, you’re just one hard landing from a spinal injury or worse.
At least it looks like it would be relatively easy to jump out of and bail if something went wrong, could try to grab a tree on the way down? Just got to get the technique of jump out and run it out on a landing to save the spine
With spinning blades of death inches above your head, you don’t want to leave your seat while the vehicle is in motion.
I think I’d still try to keep my head down and take my chances doing my best impersonation of a flying squirrel if something went sideways rather than riding that thing out. I’d like to see a video of what happens if one of those drive belts fails…
Autorotation should still be possible. With two rotors, it might even have a pretty good flare.
then the blades are coming swinging for you!
Some Chinese small engines (like the Harbor Freight Predator series) are pretty decent quality, but we’re talking for go karts or gen sets. Not so sure about applications where human life is directly dependent.
Exactly. I’m perfectly willing to use a Chinese engine in anything I can pull safely off to the side of the road.
There is no such thing as pull off safely to the side of the road in aircraft. I want stupidly simple, overbuilt reliabilty for that.
Plenty of pokey and slicey bits and ways to get uncomfortably acquainted with gravity in aviation. Unfortunately, there’s not a whole lot of ways to avoid them and still fly. Evan a big, comfortable airliner has more in common with a winged Pepsi can than the average passenger would really like to think about. Redundant systems and excruciatingly complex engineering reviews and safety certifications help, but so much of safety around aircraft on the ground and in flight comes down to everyone involved just following safety rules, procedures, and protocols. Which, as it’s often said, are written in blood.
It’s standard in safety procedures for embarking/disembarking full-scale helicopters to duck your head and move quickly and directly to or from the cabin. Even the most modern ones are still a decapitation waiting to happen if safety protocols aren’t followed.
So for the most part, both air travel and aviation events tend to slip in some sort of release clause that basically states “While all mandated safety practices are strictly upheld, you acknowledge that Gravity Works and that we hereby are not liable for the fact that you are still a humble meatbag and subject to the immutable laws of physics.”
Hmmm… That might be more human-understandable than typical legalese…
Watching that video, I must say that contraption is fucking terrifying. Never would I ever.
If it was electric it could serve as capital punishment in replacement for electric chair.
That thing looks like a death trap.
Does in come in a wood crate with the letters “ACME” stamped on the side?
Does this thing fly under the radar of any and all regulatory bodies? This seems like a loophole death machine…
“A Few Concerns”
Oh I have all the rest of of the concerns!
I’m in Canada, so a license (or permit) is still necessary. Mind you, I got that from a search and not from being a pilot.
Also, is a cooling fan despite the rotors?
Off topic, but it’s gotta go somewhere. Wtf is with the new full page ads popping up? The Intel ones I can x out, this one had no x, was 3 pages wide and scrolled left to right, had do drop the whole article and start again. Please don’t make the autopian unreadable in the way jalop…….
The rollover ones are the worst. They freeze my tablet and cause my phone to jump around on the page as they expand and collapse.
Definitely rethinking membership for next year.
I’ve been experiencing this, too! Send your concern to Matt as he can have some things adjusted. 🙂 matt@TheAutopian.com
A FEW CONCERNS?
Only a few?
I would rather die within my own control and not at the hands of some machine constantly trying to fall out of the sky.
Helicopters are so ugly that the Earth repells them. First principal of flight.
Second: they beat the air into submission.
Mercedes, if you really wanna court death, come see me. I work for a company that builds Level D flight simulators for pilot training. We have a Sikorsky trainer that doesn’t have a motion base, but has almost everything else including seat and stick shakers, smoke generators, and a huge wraparound screen to look at while you “fly”.
You can even link multiple sims together and fly missions with your friends! With guns and everything! You’ll never be satisfied with video games ever again!
That would make a cool article.I hope they can do it
Should be cool to work as tester of these things.
I’ve fooled around on some of them. I got to take a full flight simulator of a 747 through Manhattan. I flew it under a bridge, and tipped it up on one wing to fly between skyscrapers. Every anticollision warning system was screaming it’s head off, but it was pretty fun.
Awesome, would love to play a few minutes with this!
The Sikorsky sim was called a Combat Tactical Trainer (CTT), and every time we had that thing running in the high bay, there would be a line to fly it. It never really went anywhere as a product, so we mostly used it to attract attention at trade shows.
Again, there would be a LINE to fly it. The guys manning the booth would be telling the person flying it “Lock, you’ve been doing this a while, and there are a lot of people who wanna try.” And the response inevitably was “Gimme one more minute! Just one more!” So our guy would fail the tail rotor so it would crash and they’d have to get off. So much fun!
I’m actually interested in that. Where is this wonder sim?
My sense of self-preservation would not win out over “hahah microcopter go brrrrrr”
Interesting… but I think I’d rather have one of those powered parasails. If the engine quits, you just float down. This video really made me want to try one:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q53DK5–ksE
Dammit. I’m shopping now. Looks like a person could get a reasonable setup and the training to use it for around $10k. That looks like the best way to fly on a budget. Probably slightly easier to store than this, too.
This looks hella fun, if also above my risk tolerance limit.
I come from aviation, to an extent – my grandfather was a private pilot for decades and ran an airline in the 70s, my uncle (his youngest son) was an airline pilot and air safety investigator, *his* son is also an airline pilot, my dad took me to air shows as a kid, when I also read Air & Space, etc. I’ve only been to Oshkosh once, ten years ago. It was so much fun but each year I can’t or don’t for some reason. In the end I’ve always known I’m happy enough being adjacent to it. I’ve never had the interest in spending the money it takes to learn to fly, and my sensitivity to motion sickness could be a problem anyway. I’m grateful enough just to have a good friend who is a professional and recreational pilot with whom I’ve occasionally been able to fly. And there were those flights in a Cub ten or so years ago, too.
Still expensive considering all the other alternative means available with which to kill myself.
$37,500 can buy you a lot of tequila, but you’ll end up peeing it out much closer to the ground. What’s the fun in that?
I don’t drink—alcohol is poison to dogs (actually gives me instant migraines, which is like getting a bad hangover without getting drunk).
Does that mean you get three migraines, one for each head?
Also, do all three heads act as one when decisions are to be made or do they (you? y’all?) have to arrive at a consensus?
We all get migraines as we share a nervous system, but we definitely do not always agree on much except when it comes to our work. We try to work on a vote system, but that doesn’t always work, either. For instance, it took 10 minutes to type this as #3 keeps trying to interfere, so I compromised by not discussing who is usually the problem (side eye to my left).
I like that someone is doing this, but honestly,i woudnt fly it.I’m gonna need some form of proof the rotor controls and freewheel systems are robust.If there’s any doubt of it’s autorotate abilities i’m not touching it
I know the Mosquito can autorotate at ridiculously low altitudes. I know a guy that while “taxiing” his Gazelle helicopter he experienced compressor stall, thing slammed into the ground almost instantly, everyone got out with minor injuries, but all that was left of the helicopter was a puddle of aluminum and the fenestron.
If I was buying a standard category or experimental helicopter there is no way in hell I’d buy one with skids unless I was exclusively operating out of a heliport. Hovering over taxiways to use a runway is idiotic and unnecessarily dangerous.
I had a friend who was big time into building these ultralights back in the early eighties. They referred to them as flying lawn chairs. I tried some of his projects out a few times. It was fun and I have vertigo!
I do love the addition of the ballast weight on this one. It’s an ultralight, must add weight! Or is it, remove lightness?
I think the weights are added to balance out the weight of the pilot to create a centered CG.
No Mercedes, please don’t! We like you as you are, not raining down on a field somewhere in bits because something went wrong with your half of a plastic school chair strapped to some scaffolding and a couple of helicopter rotors.
I wouldn’t buy the most expensive similar device nor would I buy the least expensive. I say save for the middle option. Yes that engine is questionable.
From now on, if anything happens to you, I’m just going to assume that it’s a cover story for you getting sent to scout out evil villain volcano lairs
Hahahahahaha fuck no.
I love that the fuel tanks are right above your head, right under the hand manglers.
If we could post images, I’d post Sickos from the Onion “Yes…Ha ha ha…YES!”
I sometimes really consider learning to fly and getting something like this…then you remind me of the restrictions on ultralights and I remember how much effort would go into getting any use out of it. But it does look like a blast.
I really want aerial hobbies, but even skydiving certification, while much cheaper than a pilot’s license, is $5k+, and then more than that for equipment and you’ll always be paying someone to take you up (unless you move on to BASE jumping). It’s a lot of fun, but even that’s a lot of money to me.
MSFS 2024 is out soon.
You have a good point. I’ll soon have another chance to simulate how poorly I can handle a flying machine and that should disabuse me of my dreams of flight.
I had wanted to get my pilot’s license, but weighing the cost against the highly questionable value of it had me on the fence and that was before getting into the cost of actually utilizing the license. Going up in a cramped flying VW convinced me not to continue. Now, if it was late 1930s with a war on the horizon and the potential to get into something with 2000 hp and 8 .50 machine guns, that would be something else. Helicopters are even more expensive, but never interested me (except for when the Army kept bugging me to join and I told them only if I could fly Apaches, which I knew wasn’t an option with my eyes).
Thats funny, I told the Army the same thing about A-10’s. If i couldn’t be tracked to fly I wasn’t going.
That’s pretty much where I’m at. I’m not going to buy and store a plane, so getting a pilot’s license would just continue to cost me rental money and not be of any real use. Skydiving certification is a maybe, but still pretty far from practical. At least I could store my own equipment a lot cheaper.
Planes make boats seem downright economical. Or so I tell myself as I keep trying to save up to build one.
But if you get your skydiving certification, you could just take one of these up to altitude, and jump out. Rig up a kill switch that deploys a parachute for the copter as well, and you wouldn’t have to pay someone to fly you up. Might be safer than trying to land this thing as well.