On Thursday May 26th, Enstrom resumed flight testing of the TH-180 with the second prototype – N181TH, seen in photos here. The aircraft was flown by Enstrom test pilot and Senior Technical Fellow, William Taylor.  Taylor took the aircraft through a standard production-type acceptance, including all the hover and forward flight checks such as tracking and rigging checks.

Enstrom expects to fly the third TH-180 prototype this summer.

The pause in test flying follows the heavy landing and damage to the first prototype N180TH when it came down in February in a residential area 600m short of runway 32 at Marinette Twin County Airport at Menominee, Michigan.  Later reports, not corroborated by an NTSB report as yet, suggest that test instrumentation was a significant part of the cause for the accident.

Jeremy Parkin – HeliHub.com