Neat paint on the Helio! All that I have seen had normal factory paint, but were either new, or near new.
I have watched as a Helio landed on a private, corporate landing strip 300 feet long, and an ILS for the approach through 500 foot ceiling. It was a turbine model, and had come from NYC to an exurb of Washington DC. I was really impressed with both the airplanes performance, and the pilots skill. After the executives went into the building, I chatted with the pilot, and admired the plane. The interior was relatively spartan and definitely functional. On the floor under the rear seat was that days Wall Street Journal, which the pilot said was read on the flight down. They were scheduled to fly back to NYC in the afternoon. I was not there for the same meeting the executives were.
Another Helio was in front of me in the pattern at College Park Md CGS, a salesman demonstrating the slow flight it could achieve. I would have been happier if he had been doing that elsewhere. I flew with the flaps at 20, stall warning beeping intermittently, and zigzagging 30 degrees each side of the pattern direction to stay safely behind him. I extended the downwind to twice my normal, and still had him on the runway when I was down to 200 feet, but he did turn off at midfield, and I landed OK.
Next was at a small airport in southern Virginia, North bound in a Cessna 172, on Victor 3, and ready for food and fuel. I radio called from 5 miles out that I was inbound, straight in, and the runway number, and there was no response. As we neared the airport, we observed the Helio on crosswind, and continued to land behind him. Unfortunately, this was also a practice minimum speed landing, with an empty plane. He touched down at the numbers, braked firmly to a full stop, then taxied up the runway to the other end where the office and tie down area was located. I had made several additional calls on the published UNICOM frequency, with no response.
When it was apparent that the landing was not going to happen, full throttle, flaps slowly to zero, re trim, accelerate to 90, and climb out for another try.
After landing, we found that the offending pilot was the airport manager, and extremely apologetic for not having the radio on, and failing to see us as he was downwind. The small lunch counter on the field was defunct, so he loaned us his pickup truck to drive to a nearby restaurant. There were 4 of us, and readying the truck for loading us all in was funny. The front seat had a bottle of whiskey stuck in the crack between bottom and back, there were numerous beer cans, some full, some empty, on the seat and floor. The truck did run good, and the food much better than we could have expected at the airport. We were stacked in, though.
The windshield had all the bugs cleaned off, a big benefit, since we had started that morning near Cape Canaveral, after watching a launch. He once again apologized for the inconvenience, and we departed for home.
I have been watching this Helio from beginning to end through the paint process and I love this aircraft. It was at one time converted to tri gear, then installation of new nose kit, returned to original reverse tricycle gear, amphib floats added, then current owner removed amphib floats and returned to factory's reverse tricycle gear.
