In May 2022 Surack Enterprises purchased storied helicopter marque Enstrom with the near-term aims of restarting parts and eventually helicopter production, and a longer-term objective of improving and updating the Enstrom fleet.
Company owner, Chuck Surack, earned his venture capital by starting Sweetwater Sound, one of the world’s largest online retailers of musical instruments and equipment. Whether or not Surack will strike as rich, resonant, and sustained a note with Enstrom as he did with Sweetwater remains to be seen, but initial indicators are promising.
Chuck Surack—unlike most venture capitalist—is a good deal more than a well-heeled aggregate of unchecked appetites. Prior to taking up his current station among America’s noteworthy entrepreneurs, Surack was a touring musician—a saxophonist and keyboard player—who built his own recording studios and reverse-engineered electronic instruments for purpose of developing his own sounds.
In 2012, Surack—a licensed helicopter pilot—founded Indiana Helicopters, a charter helicopter service based in Goshen, Indiana. Two-years later, he purchased Helimotion, an aerial film production and executive charter service based in Chicago. In August 2017 Indiana Helicopters merged with Helimotion to form Sweet Helicopters. In 2022, Surack purchased the assets of then bankrupt Enstrom Helicopters, thereby saving the company from going the lamentable way of Vought, Convair, Republic, North American, and too many other widely-known and well-loved aerospace concerns lost to the vicissitudes of fortune and time.
Enstrom Helicopters was founded in 1957 by mining engineer Rudolph J. "Rudy" Enstrom, who based his young company at the Menominee–Marinette Twin County Airport (MNM) in Michigan. The company's first product was 1965’s piston-powered F-28. Rudy Enstrom—who knew little of helicopter design and had been sustained to an extensive degree by outside aerospace experts and generous investors—had been removed from his own company by the time the F-28 debuted. His surname remains Rudy’s only enduring contribution to the Enstrom enterprise.
Between 1965 and 2011, Enstrom built over 1,100 helicopters in both piston and turbine iterations. Throughout those decades, the company offered three models: the F-28, the more aerodynamic 280, and the turbine-powered 480—each with its own variants.
A hallmark of Enstrom's designs is the lack of exposed pitch change linkages for the main rotor. The mechanisms, contrary to convention, are housed within the aircraft’s hollow main-rotor shaft. The architecture reduces aerodynamic drag, and renders the linkages less susceptible to external hazards such as bird-strike, powerlines, or FOD.
In January 2022 Enstrom declared bankruptcy due to what the company’s management described as “several financial difficulties.” Technical support for Enstrom customers ceased, and the Menominee factory closed in January 2022. At the time of its closure the company had only thirty employees.
In May 2022 Surack Enterprises purchased Enstrom.
Years prior to adding Enstrom to his portfolio, Chuck Surack had learned to fly helicopters in an Enstrom 280. Impressed with the machine and the company by which it had been built, Surack purchased a 480. Of Enstrom as a whole, Surack remarks: “When the company became available, I knew how good the employees were … it’s the safest helicopter in the world. If you look at the safety record it’s really, really safe, and I just knew there was an opportunity to improve the company and restore it, and take it on to the next level.”
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