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In the late 1970s, the heads at Winnebago teamed up with a small avaition company to create the weirdest and most extravagant recreation vehicle ever: The Helihome. A fully furnished flying home based on the body of a surplus Sikorsky helicopter. Years later, the story of the helihome continues to captivate and I wanted to find the true story behind these bizarre machines.
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00:00 Introduction
02:25 The Winnebago Revolution
03:56 Surplus Sikorsky
05:07 Finding The Real Helihome Inventor
06:04 Why Use a Sikorsky?
06:28 Winnebgao Discovers the Heli-Camper
07:28 The Winnebago HeliHome
09:23 Uncovering Helihome Documents
10:54 What Happened to the Helihome?
11:39 Original heli-Camper Brochure
14:03 Magazine Articles From The Time
14:55 The Legacy of the Helihome
source
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Also check out Part II – the Catalina Landseaire! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9TaBTjHVx6A&ab_channel=Calum
@heavydsparks needs to find one of these!
Looks like a great use for old Vietnam era Huey's!
Must've been hella expensive to be a camper if this became a thing…
Us Gen-X'ers are lucky to be here with this dude tearing up tail back then. Geez 😂
I just saw the brochure S58 (N506) last week in person. It’s owned by a cherry drying operator and sitting in a hangar at Anderson Field in Brewster WA. It’s painted red like the photo you show but unfortunately they are no longer flying it. I was told by the manager that when they removed the camper items for cherry drying it started to have too much flex in the structure and was unsafe to fly. They operate 10 other S58 helicopters though. I was fortunate to fly one for a couple hours while working there.
Blinkest is heresy
I want one 👍
a zeplin would far outclass a helicopter as a camper
way to much pic switching , cant look that vid
I wonder what the actual operating cost per hour was? Aviation gasoline, maintenance, periodic tear-down inspections, insurance, type certification, etc.
God. Ch
12:51 random comment about the chess table: it wasn't oriented correctly. Based on where the player backing the photo would be sitting, the bottom right square should be white, not black.
Can you make your content inclusive by formatting the auto captioning into closed captioning please? it is extremely hard to watch it relying only on the auto captioning sadly (I'm Profoundly Deaf)
Wow this channel is a gem
Near the end of the video when a guy was considering driving helicopters like its a car, reminds me of a hypothetical i thought of as a kid where i use a hot air balloon to go to mcdonalds. I mean if it works it works haha
Is it possible to get copies of the scans of the original marketing materials? great video on the topic!
Thank you for this. But the Hardest Part is Earning the Pilots License rated in Rotor to operate it. NOT Many can achieve this for many different reasons and is why it never got off the ground….pardon the expression. I see the same problem with Flying Cars, etc..
America takes so much hate, but hell, someone had to bring a little mechanical wonder to the world.
I WANT ONE!!!!
Thank you fred!!!! 😊
I want one.
So where is the promo-unit now? Still flying… in a collection? Hope it wasn't scrapped.
im glad to know that the wild idea of a home-copter i had when i was 9 was made in the 70s by a madman
A guy in Lithia fla has a abandoned one of these missing it’s engine parts and all maybe the only one back country facing a road behind his fenced in property
Man I'm into campers fr but I've never heard of this that's awesome but crazy
Fred is a badass. He actually thought of, and then created, a heli-home. I can hardly get myself motivated to get out of bed.
3:07 🤣👍
the mobile-er home
That was fun! I think that the helicopter certificate is a grater obstacle than the price. Some people win that kind of money in the lottery. But how many of those could ever obtain a certificate? Then there is the infernal noice of a helicopter. You would probably make yourself the most hated person of the wildernes.
I stumbled across you a couple days ago, and am absolutely in love with the work you do and leads you track down. Great videos and amazingly informative and fun for someone like me, who just loves to learn and know random things.
Why did this never happen?
A series on the fwd v8 gmc motorhome