First let me say that when it comes to helicopters, I do not suppose I am much different from anybody else. As they thrum overhead, I am always going to glance up, you know. It is a habit. I worked in television news long enough to recognize my colleagues racing their way toward some mischance. That is about it.
I had never heard of what a friend called “The Ramona Helicopter Museum,” but his glowing account of the place was enough to send me up Highway 67 and down Montecito Road to a large hangar just beyond the town’s airport. I am now convinced it is one of the best kept secrets in San Diego County.
Long-time volunteer Howard Northrup welcomed me. “There are only like five helicopter museums in the world,” he said. “We just want to be the best we can.” Typically, open for a few hours, three days a week and free to enter, Classic Rotors Rotorcraft Museum has been a labor of love since it was established by helicopter builder and pilot Mark DiCiero 33 years ago. Now, jammed within this metal building are dozens of helicopters, from the tiniest ones powered by nothing more than a motorcycle engine to massive military transports. “We kept getting more and more, and pretty soon just preserving helicopter history was sort of our goal.”
It is not an exaggeration to say I never saw so many and varied rotorcraft in one place in my life. Somehow, they managed to squeeze one of the last surviving Army versions of a huge Sikorsky H-37B cargo helicopter into the museum, yawning open and seemingly ready for jeeps and combat crews even yet. Tucked away in one corner is the only Monte-Copter ever concocted. Named for the designer’s son, it is a pink colored triphibian that could fly, sail across a lake, or be driven down the highway. Sadly, the Monte-Copter tended to scorch tailgaters and only got something over two miles to the gallon. But here it is honored and thus, so is Monte.
Some are experimental and never saw mass production. Others are so rare as to be priceless. In the 1950s, thousands of Popular Mechanics readers mailed in $5.00 for “how to build” plans for that motorcycle-engine-powered Hobby-Copter. But only eight of them were ever actually put together. The one on display here is #2. Each exhibit represents an effort to lift off vertically, better and more efficiently. Taken together they are the products of dreamers and engineers in war and peacetime.
For those who may have flown aboard them, it will be a familiar trip back in time. Or if you are like me, and you just glance up out of habit whenever you hear a helicopter overhead, this is an up-close look at what has been flying by, and a tribute to decades of preservation by some truly dedicated volunteers.
Either way the Rotorcraft Museum in Ramona is something classic About San Diego.
