If you were like this Alabama couple, you too would get ideas any time you saw the body of a helicopter up for sale. But you are not, and we are not, so the helicopter-turned-camper we are going to present here is one-of-a-kind.
The masterminds behind this ingenious project are Blake Morris and Maggie Morton, both veterans and former Coast Guard pilots, which explains their affinity for aircraft. They spotted the out-of-commission helicopter on Facebook Marketplace and thought to give it another chance at glory.
They poured in over 900 hours of work and morphed the aircraft into a liveable camper, complete with all the amenities one might need for a comfortable stay, and more.
"Outdoor speakers, outdoor TV hook up, cable hook up ... we're not roughing it for sure. The TV swings around so you can watch that in bed or when you're making food in the kitchen," Morris says.
Last month, the “helicamper,” as the repurposed contraption is aptly called, went out on its first trip and it certainly turned a head or two on the road. There might have been some jaw-dropping as well.
"We've got a lot of honks and when we'd stop at some of the stoplights, people would honk and roll down their window and ask what it was or they'd give us a big thumbs up," Morgan has said to a local TV station.
The couple did a bit of research on the retired helicopter, and it turns out it was used by German military police in its hey days, then by the U.S. military in Afghanistan, to eventually return to the U.S. in 2011. And to make sure the aircraft remains a piece of history, they documented the entire transformation process on an Instagram account.
They poured in over 900 hours of work and morphed the aircraft into a liveable camper, complete with all the amenities one might need for a comfortable stay, and more.
"Outdoor speakers, outdoor TV hook up, cable hook up ... we're not roughing it for sure. The TV swings around so you can watch that in bed or when you're making food in the kitchen," Morris says.
Last month, the “helicamper,” as the repurposed contraption is aptly called, went out on its first trip and it certainly turned a head or two on the road. There might have been some jaw-dropping as well.
"We've got a lot of honks and when we'd stop at some of the stoplights, people would honk and roll down their window and ask what it was or they'd give us a big thumbs up," Morgan has said to a local TV station.
The couple did a bit of research on the retired helicopter, and it turns out it was used by German military police in its hey days, then by the U.S. military in Afghanistan, to eventually return to the U.S. in 2011. And to make sure the aircraft remains a piece of history, they documented the entire transformation process on an Instagram account.