200101-1974 Helio Courier HT-295.Pdf
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96-inch-diameter, three-blade propeller the world of Helio flying. I'm at the taxis to the active runway, puts down 30 at 64 percent of engine speed. A set of controls of a truly rare bird-one of degrees of the Helio's huge flaps ("You four Handley-Page leading-edge slats only 19 tricycle-gear Helios ever built. use 40 degrees for taking off in mud or hangs down from the massive wing, And boy do I feel lucky; Helio lore is tall grass," he says), then turns the air• which comes with certain pre-rein• full of hair-raising ground loops in tail• plane into our 10-knot crosswind• forced ribs-ribs ready for installing wheel models. I've heard it said that meaning that the airplane is perpendic• hard points for rocket launchers. This is ground loops are almost unavoidable ular to the runway. Now I know what's no run-of-the-mill general aviation air• in Helio taildraggers, and that not one coming: Ograbicz intends to take off in plane. This is a Helio Courier HT-295. of the 528 Helios ever built has a dam• the 100-foot width of the runway. The brainchild of Massachusetts age-free history. Then it's full power, an acceleration to .... Institute of Technology professor Otto My instructor is Mark Ograbicz, a vet• 30 mph on the airspeed indicator, a tug Koppen and Harvard University profes• eran Helio pilot who has spent hundreds on the yoke, and we're airborne well sor Lynn Bollinger, the first 250-hp of hours in Helio slow flight (see "Ready before we reach the edge of the runway. Lycoming 0-540-powered Helio Couri• Plane ... Take the Plane," p. 52). He utters Some buildings are ahead, so Ograbicz ers were designed and built in 1949 by the words that usually presage big trou• cranks in a 45-degree bank-by then our the Helio Aircraft Corporation. (A pro• ble-"let me show you something." He airspeed has built to a hefty 45 mph- totype was made out of a con- verted Piper PA-15 Vagabond.) Back then, the airplane's objec- tive was to come as close to stall-proof as possible-there being so many stall-spin acci- dents in the immediate post• World War II years. A byproduct of the design was the airplane's fantastic slow-speed and short takeoff and landing (STOL) performance. Koppen and Bollinger achieved their goals, and magazines of the day show the first Helio Courier taking off from a football field at M.LT. It was airborne and climbing away by the 50-yard line. Now it's my turn to discover AOPA PILOT' SO • JANUARY 2001 and away we go. Power rates that can occur with is pulled back to 3,100 full flaps. Even with the engine rpm in the climb• lift-augmenting effects of out, and as the flaps are the leading-edge slats, slowly retracted airspeed those barn doors can real• builds to a saner 80 mph. ly send you plunging-but Now we're climbing at fast. So on approach you 700 fpm. At pattern alti• have to carry some power, tude power is reduced and after my first blunders to 2,700 rpm. Ograbicz I never forget that. finishes his demonstra• Let's see, who might tion with a 60-degree want an airplane that can bank in orbit over the take off and land within approach end of the run• 600 feet or so, that can way. He drops the flaps, safely bank 60 degrees at chops the power, and we 60 knots, that's built for cross the threshold at rough fields, that can haul 55 mph. On short, short up to 1,000 pounds with final the leading-edge full fuel, that's so strong slats pop out automati• you can hang weapons on cally with a startling the wings? Why, of course, slam, we touch down, the military! and come to a halt in the Back in 1953, when length of the runway production lines in Pitts• threshold markings. Neat! burg, Kansas, first started My subsequent take• churning out what were offs and landings aren't then called H-391 Couri• as bold as Ograbicz's, ers, the airplane immedi• but they nonetheless are Something old, something new abounds in the panel of the trigear Helio Courier ately caught the Army's very short indeed. What featured in this article. Mixture control (to the left of the throttle) is connected to a eye. From the late 19503, surprises me most is the pressure carburetor and operates virtually automatically. There's a whole brace of through the mid -1960s need for a substantial avionics, including an EchoFlight StratoCheetah display capable of showing more than one-third of all amount of power to downlinked radar images and sending and receiving e-mail (top). In back, there's Couriers went to the V.S. arrest the monumental plenty of room for passengers or equipment such as Winged Vision's television armed forces, under the deceleration and sink monitor, used for sports coverage (above). V-lOA, -B, and -0 model AOPA PILOT· S 1 • JANUARY 2001 designations. Many served with Air landed on a frozen lake in the middle of breathing 10-seaters were powered by a America-the then-clandestine airline Siberia, where its crew was sent to 680-shaft horsepower Pratt & Whitney operated by the CIA-in Laos and Viet• observe and take measurements of a PT6A-27 engine; had a 101-inch-diame• nam. Couriers were especially adept at series of Soviet nuclear test explosions. ter, three-blade, reversible-pitch pro• operations out of hastily cleared jungle In Southeast Asia, similar mystique pre• peller; could climb at 2,200 fpm, and landing strips, unimproved roads, and vails. Nearly all the Couriers left behind cruise at 180 knots. It was the uT-Courier other makeshift landing zones. Many from the Vietnam War, it's said, wound up of all Couriers. military versions had published maxi• in the hands of Cambodia's Khmer Rouge, Production of all Couriers, Twin Couri• mum gross weights of 4,000 pounds-600 which then sent a few to India, Pakistan, ers, and Stallions ended in 1974, when pounds more than the civilian models. and the People's Republic of China. the type certificate and tooling were sold Show up in a Helio Courier, and In 1968, Helio began manufacturing a and then made the rounds of several you're sure to draw a crowd. In that seven-airplane production run of the firms, none of which built an airplane. crowd you can expect to encounter that H-SOO (military V-SA) Twin Courier. One of those owners had the temerity to reticent gawker who tersely allows, ") There's no mistaking a Twin Courier. It reportedly sue the erA, claiming that the used to fly these," and nothing more. had its engines mounted above the wing agency manufactured copies of Helio air• Ah, the stories these pilots could tell. with an auxiliary airfoil running between planes without permission. One legend has it that Helio was asked them. All of these 2S0-hp Lycoming 0• Today,Helio Enterprises of Prescon, Ari• to build a Courier with no identifying S40-powered airplanes saw service in zona, is the Helio Courier type certificate marks whatsoever. That airplane, it's Vietnam. In 1969, the first in a production owner. Company owner David May tag rumored, carried covert operatives and run of 18 HST-SSO (military designator (yes, of the appliance-manufacturing May• repeatedly penetrated Soviet air defenses AV-24A) Helio Stallions were built, and tags) says that he plans to put piston-pow• without being detected. The airplane these, too, went to Vietnam. These fire- ered Helio Couriers back in production in Challenger (N1TW), and a Cessna Citation X nament. I can do without sightseers, who Ready plane... (N1 AP). These were, of course, Jack Nick• probably are looking more at the ground take the plane! laus', Tom Watson's, and Arnold Palmer's air• than scanning the sky. planes. "And here at the beautiful Saucon Valley Flying the golfprofile The drill was to simply circle over the Country Club ... " the announcer now says. I Bob Mikkelson is president of Winged country club while the golfers golfed and look down at my monitor and see that Vision Inc., an outfit that provides aerial Mikkelson shot the action. The challenge for Mikkelson has framed the clubhouse. video imagery for major sports events. His me was learning the course and getting "Ready plane ... take the plane!" says the airplane: a Helio Courier, of course. "It's the used to flying at 50 knots in a 15- to 30• director, and our video instantly becomes only airplane out there that can maneuver degree bank. You have to fly this slowly to part of the show. safely at the kinds of airspeeds I need for minimize the appearance of a rotating Then there's this whispering among the the kind of shooting I do," Mikkelson said. image on the television screen. technical staff on the course. "You might "Television producers want a nice, steady So there I was, flying along at 18 to 20 like the ketchup and hot water ... What do shot-the kind of shot that you get from a inches of manifold pressure and 2,300 rpm, at you call it, egg cream ? ..Clevelander ...I'll blimp-and the Helio does a real good job what felt like a ridiculously slow airspeed. I put you in the belly of the beast.