Gordie Melville is not a difficult guy to find.
Chances are, if he’s not out somewhere flying hunters and anglers to remote lakes in his Turbo Beaver, he’s in his hangar at the Fort Frances Airport working on something.
Melville is one of those single-minded types whose passion is airplanes. If it flies, he wants to fly it. If it’s broken, he wants to fix it. And if it doesn’t exist, he wants to build it.
Melville not only services and maintains his workhorse Beaver, but when time allows, he also tinkers with cars, motorcycles, lawn mowers, and just about anything that has an engine.
As a certified A and P (airframe and powerplant) mechanic, it’s not much of a stretch for him to move from aircraft to land-based machines.
The owner/operator of Melaire Ltd. also has been flying since 1976 and over the years has accumulated what he estimates to be between 7,500 and 10,000 flying hours.
He’s not sure exactly, but he’s definitely a high-mileage commercial pilot. “I don’t really keep track of my hours,” Melville admitted.
To date, all of his considerable experience has been in fixed-wing aircraft, but that is about to change. Melville’s latest project is a two-seat personal helicopter he is assembling from scratch in his hangar at the airport.
Unlike the Beaver, which is his bread and butter, the Safari helicopter is to be strictly a recreational vehicle.
He says he has no plans to operate it commercially, although it will make an ideal photographic platform with its wrap-around transparent bubble giving it virtually omni-directional visibility—even below.
When complete, the Safari will be just over nine metres in length and weigh 659 kg at its maximum allowable weight. It can carry two people at a maximum speed of 87 knots (100 m.p.h.) and cruise at 74 knots (85 m.p.h.)
It will have a range of 322 km (200 miles).
But before that happens, there is a lot of work to be done. Melville said the Safari will require roughly 500 hours of his labour to complete. But since his time is his own, and he doesn’t keep close track of it, he doesn’t have a firm completion date in mind.
“I’d like to have it done by the fall, but I don’t know,” he said. “It depends on how much spare time I have.”
With the tourist season rapidly approaching, Melville’s time is about to become more precious. He says the period between Christmas and April is traditionally his slowest and he has been working on the helicopter since January.
So far, he’s assembled the frame in two sections, which will be mated into one as it nears completion.
For the time being, the Safari has to share hangar space with the Beaver and another project—a two-seater biplane Melville also built from scratch.
The Hiperbipe SNS-7 also is strictly a recreational vehicle that uses an engine almost identical to the one destined for the helicopter. Like the helicopter, it carries two people, but unlike the helicopter, the Hiperbipe is a speedy, agile little thing—much like a sports car—whereas the Safari will be more like an ATV.
Melville said the Hiperbipe took him nearly 20 years to build, but he hopes to complete the Safari in a fraction of that time.
Then, it just will be a matter of acquiring a rotory-wing endorsement for his commercial pilot’s licence, After that, the sky’s the limit.
So if you happen to see a tiny green-and-white helicopter clattering over the town with The Incredible Hulk painted on the underside of the cabin, give it a smile. You can be sure its pilot is smiling.
(Fort Frances Times)
Fort Frances Times
Local News from Across the Rainy River District
