Helihome: The Insane 1970's Flying Camper

in september 1977 readers of the science and technology magazine popular mechanics would have found a captivating illustration on that month's front cover flying campers go where you've never been before it was a promise of freedom like no other a fitted kitchen for cooking up the fresh fish little timmy is catching out on deck a tv for evening entertainment a fully furnished home in the sky that could take you and the family anywhere and everywhere it's fair to say though that popular science magazines were known for presenting fanciful and outlandish technologies that had little chance of becoming anything close to reality but this flying recreational vehicle was 100 real and little did i know when i started researching this project that i discovered not only the fascinating history of these unique heli homes but also track down the man who made them this is the story of the heli home before we dive further into the fascinating history of the heli home however i wanted to tell you that today's video is sponsored by blinkist and blinkist is an app that might just completely change the way that you read and discover books at least it certainly has for me blinkist is a huge curated library of non-fiction books from history and politics to science philosophy and a whole lot more the team pull out the key takeaways and highlights from various works condense them into short beautifully narrated 15-minute blinks as they call it and then you can either listen to or read them there are so many books that i have discovered and rediscovered in the last year of using blinkist perfect example being chernobyl the history of a nuclear disaster one of my favorite books and summarized perfectly on blinkist if you want to learn and understand the context and the important points of the story they also have these beautiful custom covers for the book that just look amazing in the app another one the box i made a video all about the history of jerrycans you may have seen it well up 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ubiquitous generic brand name of the recreational vehicle when you think rv you think winnebago except that that was a 1986 fleetwood bounder inside the various winnebago models where all the creature comforts a 1970s traveler could want a fully functioning stove top comfortable seating and beds for all the family lots of smooth veneer wood paneling unnervingly visible toilets and just so much shag carpeting even with the oil crisis and the shaky economy of the late 1970s rvs were still incredibly popular around the united states and the winnebago company was looking for something as a promotional tool and product that could draw customers into their lots and also be marketed at more high-paying vacationers looking for something above and beyond your typical recreational vehicle something special something more adventurous something like a decommissioned us military helicopter [Music] it just so happened that by the 1970s the us army was in the process of selling off many of its former fleet of sikorsky s58 or choctaw helicopters robust reliable and simple compared to other helicopters of the time they had seen extensive service especially with the us marines in vietnam where they had acted as transport utility and even early helicopter gunships outfitted with machine gun positions and rocket pods they were also surprisingly spacious for their size the aircraft's radial engine one of the things that made them so reliable and simple to maintain also meant the cockpit was located above the main cabin this odd looking shape made them less aerodynamic but provided ample room in the passenger cabin giving her the ability to carry 12 to 16 occupants or eight stretchers when used for medical evacuations it's also probably one of the reasons that the s58 was chosen as marine one outfitted with a spacious and comfortable interior benefiting the transportation of the president of the united states but just how do you turn a decommissioned no-frills military helicopter designed with comfort as the final thought into a lavish flying rv fit with all the comforts of home is that fred hey how are you this is fred clark and while the story of the heli home is often told today as an invention of winnebago it was in fact fred and his company orlando helicopter airways who created the initial idea of the flying camper van in the 1970s after a lot of research and emailing i amazingly found fred and i was able to give him a call at his home in florida to quote winnebago's sales brochure the heli home is inspected down to the last riverton wire and remanufactured by orlando helicopter airways incorporated one of the nation's oldest and most established helicopter operations and rebuilding firms that's basically what what we did we buy surplus military s55 and s58 helicopters we operate them we build and rebuild them uh use them for various jobs agricultural heavy lift flying crane that type of thing the sikorsky was about the only thing i could think of that would ever work you could have a kitchen and a bathroom and all that inside like a regular camper it takes a pretty good sized helicopter to be able to get all that inside and really make a camper configuration out of it fred clark had flown as a pilot with the us navy and after leaving had established orlando helicopter airways in 1964. fred and his team had created the first heli home independently at that point called the heli camper before being noticed by winnebago's marketing team yes that's about the way it was we we developed the first one and uh we're a little published they saw it and uh and then they wanted to work with us and they designed the interior and provided the material for the interior and the design the paint job and all that sort as such rather than winnebago creating the heli home they would in fact be the first buyer of a heli home commissioning from fred a smaller a55 heli camper first now renamed the heli home and later the model n62254 that would go on to feature in the various promotional materials sold under winnebago's upmarket atasca division we had first s55 camper and then we had the s58 camper and i think you got a copy of the s58 camper on the front page of poplar mechanics magazine the aforementioned popular mechanics article from 1977 describes their test model in great detail and the reality was not far from the fanciful illustration depicted on the magazine's front cover the sikorsky's large main cabin had been transformed into a space not unlike that of a traditional rv with full carpeting throughout and soundproofing to insulate the interior living space a seating area with tables could be transformed into bunks that could sleep up to four a small galley contained enough space for a two burner electric range and a four cubic feet refrigerator hot and cold air was provided by way of a 6000 btu air conditioning unit and a 40 000 btu furnace all of which ran off an auxiliary 3500 watt generator a water heater could provide hot water to both the galley and the small bathroom located aft where a chemical toilet and shower was installed other useful features included a full sound system with an am fm radio and cassette deck a full color tv and intercoms for communication between the cockpit and cabin there was also ample storage for other items such as inflatable raft folding tables an awning or even the odd rifle as winnebago's own sales brochure boasted whether equipped for recreation as a traveling field office or on-site testing laboratory the heli home offers outdoor enthusiasts and business firms the speed and ease of air travel and the luxury of finely appointed facilities on the ground all of this tied up in a neat bundle for the low low price of almost three hundred thousand dollars almost one and a half million in today's money however the heli home was never truly a product that winnebago intended to sell at any form of scale with one magazine stating that they only succeeded in selling a single heli home for winnebago it was primarily a promotional tool and it succeeded in drawing visitors into dealerships and rv trade shows around the country and getting onto the front cover of various magazines so not only was fred kind enough to talk to me about his experience creating the heli home he also sent me all of this amazing original documentation that he scanned and photocopied and dispatched from america to me in scotland now full disclosure this has already been opened it was actually opened by my parents because i'm currently on holiday right now i'm actually filming this and making this video on the road i'm in a hotel in bavaria right now in germany and they kindly scanned everything send it over to me i've not seen any of the stuff that's in here though so we're opening this up uh together for the first time which is really quite exciting so fred sent me this really lovely uh letter as well dear calum enclosed are copies or originals of what i have relative to the helihome this project certainly has had a long and interesting life we sold several of their craft and most were used for transportation however one was used in california by a helicopter operator for camping in the high mountains he would tell us about landing next to his favorite lake camping and fishing i actually talked about this uh or fred brought it up during our conversation we had one operator that uh that used s55 helicopters in his agricultural operation and he bought a camper and he used the camper quite extensively actually uh you'd uh would fly it up to a favorite lake up in the mountains somewhere and camp out and all that sort so moving on to the actual documents themselves uh this is something you guys probably recognize from the video uh this is the the winnebago sales brochure interesting about this illustration this actually is the helicopter that they made but you can actually look up the entire history of this from its construction in 1960 it served with the us military um it was with the marines it actually suffered combat damage according to the the records that we have online it was then transferred into fred's company they turned it into the heli home it was then taken out of that sold to numerous different companies again throughout the 90s and 80s and i think the the very last reference to we have to this is in 2015. so there is a photo from around 2013 or 15 of this it's been repainted and it's obviously gone through a lot of different things since then but it's amazing that the life this one airframe had and it's probably still out there somewhere uh in the states so yeah quite quite amazing this is really the thing i wanted to show you guys on camera and i've never actually seen this in real life this is an original sales brochure which i think comes from after the winnebago sales promotion ended um so this would have followed the winnebago heli home when they rebounded back to the orlando heli camper and you've got this amazing photo with the veranda deployed on the outside um set up next to you know this lovely river absolutely gorgeous uh photo and this is the original one it's not a photocopy um fred kindly sent this over to me if we open it up you've got not only interior photos you also have illustrations as well too um the guys out camping look very close to the trees here i would be very worried trying to take off i'm no pilot but uh anyway inside though you can see photos here too there's the refrigerator and stove top shower and and bathroom you can see here i never even noticed this one of the tables here is set up and has a color scheme so that you can play chess or checkers on it and this one here i think is set up so you can play backgammon on it um that is really interesting i never noticed that before and also you can see in both of these photos there's this little hatch here that's the pass-through that leads to the cockpit remember the cockpit's located above the main cabin so they created this pass-through and you can actually see the padding and the soundproofing that was put on this this whole interior area was was padded and soundproofed now this illustration with these two very worried people clearly um trying to talk up how much this experience is costing them they're like honey is this really three hundred thousand dollars and you can actually tell this is the smaller uh version fred mentioned that they made two models uh now the heli home that winnebago created they specifically used the um s58 the larger version but they sold both and the s55 had a slightly different layout um you can tell it's the s55 because the bed was above and at the back whereas with the s58 the toilet was located uh at the the rear of the the plane you can see on the back here this uh gives you the differences between the two different models i actually think if i was gonna if i was gonna buy one of these if i had a half a million pounds to spend i'd probably get the s55 not only is it smaller the bed is actually better they always say that in a van if you're living the van life better to have a bed that is always set up so you're not having to make your bed up uh every single night a few other articles you might have uh seen some of these referenced again in the video here um this is the professional pilot april 1981 so this is when they were actually on sale this is a bit of advertising um from the time and there's some great photos in here you might be able to spot there is the interior controls for the for the cockpit here is another great shot of the interior uh of the the larger s58 model with the pass-through little kitchenette area as well too you've got your radio set up there and then looking back here your your toilets intercom and then there's your bunks uh set up as tables but then could be set up into banks as well too uh so yeah quite quite amazing uh quite remarkable seeing all of these things and you know just shows you uh all of this stuff is not really available online when you look up blogs and articles it's you know there's stuff online about it uh but most of the stuff i hadn't been able to see properly until i emailed fred essentially so yeah quite amazing thank you very much fred the heli home was a unique and bizarre product that was sold for only a brief period of time into a small and select audience rather than fading into obscurity however it was an idea that captured the imagination to such a degree that it is frequently shared discussed and talked about online i think it just uh people's imagination kind of kind of runs wild you know they think well boy that would be nice to have my own helicopter and be able to fly off to the mountain somewhere and camp out and all that sort and in many ways it came closest to fulfilling the ideas of what the helicopter was originally envisioned to achieve in an article he wrote for the atlantic as far back as 1942 igor ivanovich sikorsky whose name would become synonymous with the aircraft he helped pioneer presented a vision of people owning helicopters in much the same way they owned a car suburban commuters would take helicopters to and from work in the city and on weekends families could fly beyond the roads to explore wherever they like equipped with floats instead of wheels the helicopter can rise from your door and if necessary land in a swamp or lake river or savannah the vast and beautiful canadian north country with its thousands of gem-like lakes will be visited by helicopter tourists who will look upon breathless scenes never before or perhaps seen by the eye of man [Music] you

Channel: Calum

Views: 2,077,141

Keywords: Helihome, Heli-Camper, Helicopter, Sikorsky, sikorsky helicopter, Sikorsky S-58, sikorsky choctaw, Vanlife, Flying Campervan, winnebago, Winnebago Campervan, Winnebago Helihome, recreational vehicle

Id: o-9v_8HpJus

Length: 16min 25sec (985 seconds)

Published: Thu Jul 07 2022