Helio Courier

Helio Courier
Helio H295 Super Courier of 1967 at Valle, Arizona, in October 2005
Role	STOL Utility aircraft
Manufacturer	Helio Aircraft Company
Designer	Otto C. Koppen, Lynn Bollinger
First flight	14 April 1949 (Helioplane #1)
Introduction	1954
Status	some still flying in 2015
Primary user	Military forces and private pilots
Number built	500 (approximate total)
Unit cost	$151,600 in 1984
Variants	Helio Stallion

The Helio Courier is a cantilever high-wing light C/STOL utility aircraft designed in 1949.

Around 500 of these aircraft were manufactured in Pittsburg, Kansas from 1954 until 1974 by the Helio Aircraft Company. During the early 1980s, new owners (Helio Aircraft Ltd.) made an attempt to build new aircraft with direct-drive Lycoming engines, to replace troublesome and expensive geared engines. In a further effort to reduce weight, a new composite landing gear was featured. The new models also featured modest winglets. Two models were produced, the H-800 and H-700. A total of 18 aircraft were built. The rights to the Helio Stallion and Helio Courier were acquired by Helio Aircraft of Prescott, Arizona, and will soon be returned to production.

Professor Otto C. Koppen designed aircraft for the Stout Metal Airplane Division of the Ford Motor Company, including the Ford Flivver, an aircraft that was supposed to be mass-produced by Ford. Koppen went on to design the Helio Courier.

The demonstrator for the Courier's concept, "Helioplane #1", was converted by the then-local Wiggins Airways firm from a Piper PA-17 Vagabond Trainer, one of the so-named "short-wing Pipers" in production following World War II. Only the cabin area of the PA-17's original airframe remained unmodified, with the fuselage lengthened by four feet (1.2 meters), given a taller fin-rudder unit, clipped the Vagabond's stock 29 ft-3 inch (8.92 meter) wingspan down to only some 28.5 feet (8.7 meters), fitted the shortened wings with full-span leading-edge slats, long-span wing flaps that forced the ailerons to be much diminished in size, and a longer-travel main landing gear of a taller design, not unlike that of the 1930s-origin Fieseler Fi 156 German military STOL pioneer aircraft. The powerplant for the demonstrator was switched to the Continental C85 boxer-four cylinder air-cooled engine, upgraded with fuel-injection, and uniquely equipped with a multi-belt speed reduction unit to drive its Aeroproducts nine-foot (2.75 meter) diameter, variable-pitch two-blade propeller, which contributed greatly to the amazing STOL flight characteristics of the demonstrator aircraft. The demonstrator's first flight took place on April 8, 1949, flying from what was then called the Boston Metropolitan Airport, an airport located within the greater Boston suburban town of Canton, Massachusetts which was closed at the end of the 1960s, after the opening of nearby Norwood Memorial Airport (only 1.5 miles (2.5 km) NNW of the Canton facility), which itself first opened as an emergency WW II airfield in 1942.