Everyman's Aircraft

The fuselage is usually just a tangled trellis of thin steel tubing. The cockpit is an open bucket seat, bolted prayerfully to the frame. The power plant is a sputtering, 40-h.p. engine borrowed from a motorcycle. Hovering motionless in midair, its 10-ft. rotor blades windmilling, the makeshift craft looks like an airborne Erector set. But in the hands of an experienced pilot, it can fly like a startled mosquito--straight up to 8,000 ft., forward, sideways or backward at 65 m.p.h., right down to a feather-soft landing on any convenient driveway. Last week, in a dozen U.S. cities from San Diego to Cedar Rapids, do-it-yourself helicopter kits were outselling Jaguars, and homemade choppers were buzzing peaceful country cow-pastures. Said one fledgling flyer: "There isn't anything in boats, motorcycles, sports cars, parachute jumping or skindiving that will hold a candle to it."

"Americans Are Nuts." Behind the homemade helicopter boom are high-soaring thrills, little risk and low cost. Ready-to-fly commercial helicopters cost upwards of $20,000, but Bensen Aircraft Co. of Raleigh, N.C., has sold "several thousand" do-it-yourself kits, ranging in price up to $6,000, has a file of 100,000 potential customers--most of whom already have paid $2 for drawings and general specifications of its products. Two years ago, convinced that "Americans are nuts about helicopters," Los Angeles Copter Buff Tom Adams quit his job as a sheet metal worker at Douglas Aircraft Co., began peddling his own Hobbycopter kits and blueprints. Last year Adams sold nearly 100 kits at $2,800 apiece, mailed out more than 1,000 blueprints at $35 each. Helicopter clubs have sprouted up in Detroit and Flint, Mich., Rockford, Ill., Minneapolis and St. Paul. Explains Designer Igor Bensen: "Helicopters attract the young in spirit. Some are people who have reached the saturation point playing with cars and want more of a challenge. Some are frustrated pilots. There are more than 300,000 pilots in the U.S. but only 70,000 planes."

Designing helicopters is a hobby that dates back to Leonardo da Vinci, and many of today's enthusiasts still prefer to build their own rather than buy mass-produced kits or blueprints. San Diego's Jim Cassell and Don Machado, both technical illustrators, are designing a helicopter that will fold its rotors, drive like a car on the ground. Draftsman Herman Saalfeld of San Diego planned his own 6-ft. 6-in. Skyshooter, a sophisticated chopper that carries two passengers in a bubble canopy, boasts a top speed of 95 m.p.h. and a range of 250 miles. "I don't know how high the damned thing will go," says Saalfeld. "I got it up to nearly 6,000 ft. once, and it was still climbing. I came back down because the ground looked so far away I got lonesome." Aircraft Mechanic Tom Pearson has improved on a standard Bensen design, added a four-bladed propeller, a muffler and ground brakes--an uncommon feature on home-built helicopters. Explains Pearson: "If you haven't got brakes, you have to spin the prop, then jump in the seat quick to keep the beast from running away."

Unlicensed Pilots. The Federal Aviation Agency classes all homemade helicopters as "experimental aircraft"--even if they are constructed from commercial kits--so backyard chopper buffs need no helicopter pilot's license. In the mountains outside San Diego last week, Surveyor Stanley Vinson was cautiously testing a helicopter he built with Truck Driver George Donoho. "I'm the test pilot," explains Vinson, "because George won't get in the damned thing. And I have to be careful because I've never flown a helicopter. So I gotta kind of figure out what to do if it takes off. Man's got to pay attention to safety with these things." Most homemade helicopters are remarkably safe: if the engine fails, the whirling rotor blades act like a parachute. Recalls San Diego Electronics Technician Ted Thomas: "I was goofing around over the countryside one day at about 50 ft. when I ran out of gas. I'd never tried a dead-stick landing before and didn't know what to do, so I just sat there and waited. The little buggy just settled right down as easy as you please."

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