Having spent some time looking on the internet for a good Weight and Balance Calculator for the Robinson R22 Helicopter and finding most of them to be poorly designed and difficult to customise, I decided to create my own.
This MS Excel spreadsheet has a clear layout and simple tables for adding additional aircraft details.
Simply enter your weight, and the weight of your passengers plus their baggage, and the calculator will tell you how much fuel you can load to reach MTOW, and also show you the CG position on the charts taken from the POH. Simple drop-down lists allow you to choose your doors and dual-control configuration, and see how the change in weight affects your CG position. If things start to light up red - you know you’re overloaded!
on Dec 9th, 2008 at 7:20 pm
Great spreadsheet! I do have one question though. I am rather poor at the use of Excel. How exactly do I edit the aircraft tables?
thanks,
Andy
on Dec 9th, 2008 at 7:53 pm
Thanks for your comments.
The first thing you need to do in order to edit the spreadsheet is unlock it. The sheet is “protected” so that certain cells cannot be changed by accident. In Office 2003 this is “Tools/Protection/Unprotect Sheet” and in Office 2007 is “Review Tab/Unprotect Sheet”.
You will then be able to change the “Aircraft Information” section to match your aircraft. All you have to edit after that is update cell I2 “Data/Data Validation” so that all your new aircraft registrations show up in the drop down list.
If you want to change the aircraft type, from say R22 Beta to R22 Beta II, then you just need to update the two CG columns with the correct parameters.
Make sure you “Protect” the sheet again after your changes to ensure that nothing gets changed by accident.
If you like, just send me your aircraft information and I’ll provide you with an updated spreadsheet.
on Dec 12th, 2008 at 11:53 am
Is this Free? I downloaded the xls, but I can’t change the aircraft registration field, And even when I unprotect it doesn’t allow it to be changed….Help?
on Dec 12th, 2008 at 11:58 am
Yes, completely free, although donations are appreciated!
The aircraft registration field is setup as a drop-down list. You need to select cell I2 then go to “Data/Data Validation” and edit the “source” field so that all your new aircraft registrations show up in the drop down list. If you like, you could just remove the drop-down list and manually type in the required aircraft registration each time.
Any problems, just ask.