In mid November, Arizona-based rotor blade manufacturer Van Horn Aviation received a letter from Brazil's Agency Nacional de Aviacao Civil (ANAC) conferring an STC for 206B main rotor blades. The ANAC STC, posted on the VHA website's documents page validates an FAA STC issued in August 2020 and permits the new main rotor blades to be installed on Bell 206B JetRangers registered in Brazil.
The 206B Version 2 composite main rotor blades use the same corrosion-resistant carbon fibre/foam core construction as VHA's original 206B main rotor blades, but contain different carbon fibre ply counts and orientations to ‘soften’ the blades and mimic the ride and feel of the metal blades.
With a service life of 10,000 hours, around double that of the metal blades, and available directly from VHA and its distributors at a list price of $60,000 per blade, the VHA blades replace OEM metal blades with part numbers 206-010-200-133 and up.