JSF,
I've done a fair amount of consulting and spread sheets for guys wanting to fly civilian helicopters, and believe it or not, depending on who you train with, it can actually be cheaper to get your SE F/W ratings through CFI and just go back and make all your helicopter training "add-ons". Plus being dual-rated may benefit you sometime in the future. Outside of big cities, a C-172 rents for around $125-$150/hr wet, whereas I've seen R-22s going for $275+ here on the west coast. Even if it still takes you 65-70K once you've finished the add-ons, you still have double the ratings for the money. Although, helo pure training will get you more R/W time in your logbook, but that extra 50-60 hrs of R-22 time may not do as much for as you the rating will.
Also, as was said before,
DO NOT give money up front for anything but a 10-20hr block of time. The Silver State debacle a few years ago left hundreds of students with upwards of 75-80K of debt when they closed their doors. All the reputable companies are now having to bear the blow back from Silver State and know better than to ask for all the money up front. Do some archival searching on
www.justhelicopters.com and/or
www.verticalreference.com for the complete Silver State story. Those sites are pretty good for getting the current pulse of the helicopter industry as it applies to new pilots.
I did my ATP in an R-44 and I personally don't care for the Robinsons, which after flying everything from MH-47s on down rendered me incapable of keeping it within the confines of a soccer field for the first 30 minutes. However, they are undeniably the C-172s of the helicopter training industry, and you're going to have to get trained in them at some point to satisfy SFAR 73 which pertains specifically to Robinsons. Most, if not all entry level CFI jobs are in R-22s. I like the Schweizers just because they're more conventional.
As far as jobs, I'll refer once again to Silver State helicopters. They truly did a disservice to the industry because when they abruptly closed their doors, they also put hundreds of low time Robinson CFIs out on the streets. Hence, they're pretty easy to find as all are still chasing the helicopter dream, have thousands in student loans due, and will usually work for cheap. Also, to a lesser extent than with the post-Vietnam era, the market is also currently being infused with fairly high time military helo pilots with lots of turbine and mountain time. The military equivelency which allowed all military IPs to obtain CFI/IIs made the field even more competitive.
I know the company I work for gets a dozen applications weekly from multi-thousand hr Robby pilots, and at least a couple cold call walk-ins from Army pilots from the base up the road (don't do this, is pisses off the Chief Pilot) It varies from job to job, but the mean average to be qualified for just about any turbine position that you can live off of is 2,500-3,000 TT with at least 1,500 turbine helo PIC. It's all driven by insurance requirements. Don't mean to paint a bleak picture, but knowleadge is power!
MR-