I was in my office, minding my own business, Gary Yanson was in the lobby, bird dogging the receptionist when in rushed Smokey Castner, all out of breath.
Smokey had found a Hiller Hornet on a used car lot in Tampa that he was able to trade for a Scorpion helicopter. Smokey wanted me to go over to Lakeland and help him start it.
With such a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, everything else could wait. I grabbed Gary and over to Lakeland we went.
A Hiller Hornet was a ram jet helicopter with a one-blade tail rotor, started with a plug in engine like an oversized drill motor, a 2 cylinder, 2-stroke engine.
The jets were normally lit by a magneto turned by the rotor, firing model airplane spark plugs in the burner cans; but in this case, the magneto was dead. I decided we could light them by draping burning, kerosene soaked rags in the flame holders.
Smokey had previously filled the 90 gallon fuel tank with gasoline. He and Gary got on board (seated on top of the gas stank) and I prerotated with the rotor starter motor, but the jets wouldn’t light. It resembled a rotary lawn sprinkler, sprinkling gasoline every where and particularly on Smokey’s old wood frame house.
I finally called a halt to the proceedings and said; “Why don’t we read the manual?”
The manual said; “To start the jets, turn the fuel control valve to ‘full on,” 90 gal/hr as I recall. We had just cracked the valve during the first attempt.
Following the manual, the jets lit right up, a long yellow flame trailing out of each jet at initial lightoff but as the rotor gathered speed the flame gradually got sucked back into the burner cans and the only visible evidence was a slight blue cone.
I think I know the origin of this Hornet. A number of years before, a helicopter operator had a spot on a vacant lot just south of the Tampa airport, selling sightseeing rides in a Bell-47. He also had a Hornet parked on the lot; others say they had seen him flying the thing.
Smokey eventually bent the skids and advertised it for sale in Trade-A-Plane; receiving a call from a Hiller museum in San Diego as nearly as I can recall. They came and got it so I suppose it’s still in San Diego or where ever.
I’ll bet that thing autorotated like a brick with a hollowed out watermellon on each blade tip.