A friend of mine had 29" Bush Wheels on his H-800 until he wore them out, now he has 26" Goodyears.

Wright Air Service in Fairbanks, AK runs Gar Aero wheel adapters and large tires on their Helio. There are, to the best of my knowledge, no STC's for the Gar Aero adapters, so a field approval would probably be required. Bob Bursiel is the owner, and one of the best Helio pilots around. He could fill you in.

The Alaska Region of FAA has a logical and simple process for approving large tires on any airplane. It works, and has been known to be accepted elsewhere as well.

MTV

Hello Heliodriver,

I have enjoyed your comments and also really like helios. I recently purchased an H295 and have been enjoying it. Your last name doesn't start with an "M" does it? I would enjoy speaking with you about my Helio!

Helio Driver found your name on another post! Will call to talk about 'em soon!

If you where going to re-build a Courier with a Turbine what would you do?

I have been looking at the Soloy 'turbine-pac' system with the Rolls-Royce 250 series turboshaft engines. I have been looking at the power graphs and Heliodriver is right. The TIO-540 will put down more power at 14,000+ than the 250-B17F as far as I can tell. The B17F is a turboprop unit from the factory and is only about 210lbs though vs the 500lbs for the 540 however. Was there an STC for the 250-B17F conversion?

I have been looking at the original Soloy gearbox system because it could allow the use of the more powerful 250-c30. The compressor inlet is toward the cowl and perhaps a filter or particle separator could be designed to allow dusty/dirty reliability while pulling air from up top and/or rear of the cowl, maybe even a filter system.

Personally a Turbine Courier would be the perfect plane for us. We are going to be flying from the Durango, CO area to the Idaho backcountry around Salmon or the long haul to the Chicago area. The slow and fast performance of the Courier looks VERY attractive to us. Anyone know what the max cruise is on a Turbine Courier would be? Looking at the silver one on the web, PP-VZJ/N88726. They listed economy cruise at: 170 mph @ 19.5 gallons/hr (60 lb torque, 310 shp).

...and speaking of turbine performance, I just got a max performance "demo" ride in the new Kodiak a couple of days ago. That is impressive!! And the pilot said he only used 700 of the 750 hp. John

Hi Heliodriver,

Here at Aerial Photos of NJ we have decided that we need a Helio for slow speed orbital work and aerial video. Currently we have a FG Cardinal that cruises at 150 MPH and ideally we would like more cruise speed with the upgrade. (Most of our work is below 7500')
Can you give me some approx cruise numbers with the dif models?

We would also like to put a mapping camera in the belly but I see that the Helio has the exhaust coming down the centerline. Are you familiar with any mods that would allow us to put an aerial camera in the back of a helio? Is it true that you can legally fly the Helio with the cargo door off (for video)?

Thanks,

heliodriver wrote:

ccurrie wrote:heliodriver what engine does an h250 have? Is it a lycoming O-540, how do they perform? seems to me that would be a more economical setup if you dont need the high altitude performance.

It has the O-540-A1A5 (250 HP) not a stellar performer, and certainly not up high, but if you are operating at below 7500 feet MSL, it does just fine, it is a light airplane empty and gross 3400 pounds......2000 hour TBO..... But at gross they are "mushy" on a warm day

AerialPhotoPro-

You may want to contact a company in Southern California regarding mounting cameras in the helios. The Company is Aero Pacific, and they recently moved to Oceanside in Northern San Diego County. The Owner is Steve Murray. In addition to a belly camera port I believe that he may have several PMA'd external camera mounts for the Helios. Steve has a long history of working on, rebuilding and refurbishing Helios. He has several in various stages of re-construction in his shop at any given time.

I've seen a number of his mounts for FLIR units and other cameras and they all look very good. He builds a lot of mounts for medical and law enforcement helicopters in addition to fixed wing stuff.

I don't have his phone number handy, but if you are interested send me PM and I will get it for you.

Mark

Thanks for the info Mark. Someone has already posted Steve's phone number on another list so I'll give him a call.

Taildown wrote:AerialPhotoPro-

You may want to contact a company in Southern California regarding mounting cameras in the helios. The Company is Aero Pacific, and they recently moved to Oceanside in Northern San Diego County. The Owner is Steve Murray. In addition to a belly camera port I believe that he may have several PMA'd external camera mounts for the Helios. Steve has a long history of working on, rebuilding and refurbishing Helios. He has several in various stages of re-construction in his shop at any given time.

I've seen a number of his mounts for FLIR units and other cameras and they all look very good. He builds a lot of mounts for medical and law enforcement helicopters in addition to fixed wing stuff.

I don't have his phone number handy, but if you are interested send me PM and I will get it for you.

Mark

Kinda gives new meaning to keeping the stick all the way back through the flare.

Fatal crash caused by wing failure, NTSB says

Wing failure caused a floatplane crash that killed four men in the Katmai National Park and Preserve last year, according to a federal accident report.

When it crashed, the Helio Courier was carrying two Canadian businessmen, a Homer fishing guide and a Wasilla pilot who had just ended a day of fly-fishing at a remote lake. The floatplane hurtled into trees and tundra about 10 miles from its destination, the Royal Wolf Lodge, killing them all.

But after the wings were taken apart, laboratory tests showed corrosion in a spot where a wing attaches to the plane. The corrosion weakened the connection. Fractures on a massive bolt -- about 1 inch in diameter -- showed the stress was emanating from the corroded area, according to the NTSB report.

ALERT

As a result of those findings, the Federal Aviation Administration sent a special bulletin on Sept. 9 to all Helio operators, asking them to look for corrosion in the fittings for the plane's forward wings.

The corrosion might be hard to spot.

Someone would have to take the wings off the plane -- an intensive and complicated process -- in order to see the amount of corrosion discovered during the NTSB investigation, Johnson said.

"That is one of the things to wrestle with: how to inspect without taking the wings off," he said.

But if there's corrosion on the outside of the fittings, there's probably corrosion on the inside, he said.

It's hard to say for sure when corrosion became a problem on this plane, he said.

A BEEFY PLANE

Branham said he bought the plane from legendary Bush pilot Lowell Thomas in the 1980s, and his lodge uses three other Helio Couriers.

The reason his company chose this type of plane for the lodge was its reputation as one of the safest in the world, he said.

It's hard to accept that a plane of that caliber would have a structural failure, he said: It's so strong.

"All the pilots I've talked to have said, 'Gee, that must have been an isolated incident.' "

But this was not the first time the Helio Courier has had a problem with wing separation. In the 1980s, federal officials required owners of Helio planes to install new fittings where the wing attaches to the fuselage, Branham said.

You are referring the wing carry-thru AD of 1982 and this requires vigilant inspection every 500 hours or sooner. This has been a sore spot for Helio owners for sometime, when Helio built the H-800 and 700 Clarence Brent applied the "fix" to these airplanes and he is not with us anymore. Someone has the STC and fix for H-391B thru HT-295 all models in between.

AD 82-16-08

We have now a free website for all Helio information, a social type network site

http://sloflight.ning.com/

Helio Fly-In and Conference, May 22-23, 2009

Oshkosh, WI

Orion Flight Services FBO

A second Helio has shown up with wing corrosion at the attachment point. This was addressed by the NTSB in their finding involving the demise of N295BA Helio H-295 belonging to Branham Adventures

Not enough inspection revealed corrosive issue where the bolt attaches to the left wing at the "root"

For more go here, thanks guys!!

http://www.ntsb.gov/ntsb/brief.asp?ev_i ... 1515&key=1

C/STOL is an acronym for "controlled, short, take-oof and landing".. The Helio is controllable at minimum airspeeds (31 MPH) but you won't stall or spin ina normal sense you can get behind the "curve" and develop a decent sink rate.

The "goofy" wing tips was a product of James Cox who joined Helio in 1982 and implemented them to improve aerodynamic flow at the tip, guess what?? He flunked!!......They have no purpose what so ever, except for the addition of 40 pounds

The Helio 800/700 models are very heavy empty like some 2700-2800 LBS.

Go here for all info on Helio if you are interested

http://sloflight.ning.com/

Had a sighting of the rare tricycle Courier this weekend at the airport:

Zzz wrote:Had a sighting of the rare tricycle Courier this weekend at the airport

That looks so wrong.

Resurrecting an old thread. But I see few threads on the type. There were several different offsite forums for Helio people, but I'm not seeing that any of them are still accessible? Does anyone know of a place to find more information now? Or is it limited to calling around to a few mid-timers and old-timers for personal one on one conversations about this great airframe.

Go to flyhelio.com they are still active and have some guys that know helios like the back of their hands.

Here's a Yahoo Helio forum. Not too active though. Maybe you could stir 'em up!

https://groups.yahoo.com/group/heliocourier/