There are a few planes that showed up at the Concrete Fly In that I particularly liked and one of those was a Helio Courier.  This is a beast of a plane but one that has some impressive field performance.  The example that showed up was completely unpainted which made it look even better (plus shaved some pounds off to improve that performance even more).  However, I was a little troubled by some of the flying.  The pilot took it up for a flight while we were there, and they climbed up above the field.  From the ground it is always hard to judge accurately what is happening so I will caveat all of this by saying it is how it appeared to me.

I don’t know what the winds were like aloft, but they seemed to be doing some slow flight above the field.  There also seemed to be a bit of wing rocking going on as they maneuvered, and I did wonder just how close to the stall they were flying.  Things might have been perfectly safe, but it did look odd from the ground.  Then there was the landing.  I don’t know whether they intended to land on the grass beside the runway but, as far as I am aware, that is not a designated operating area.  I think it is used for taxiing.  Anyway, they landed off the side of the runway and ran out on this area of grass.  Was that intentional?  Sort of didn’t look like it but I can’t say for certain.  Was it a good idea?  Probably not.

Let’s put all of that aside for now.  The aircraft is a fine machine, it carries a decent payload, it can get in and out of short strips and it is not so common so all of that adds up to a cool aircraft to see up close – thankfully not too close!