Kleefeld man gifts helicopter to museum

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This article was published 26/01/2024 (455 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

A Kleefeld man has gifted his helicopter to a museum with the hope of bringing the love of aviation to young people.

Derek Wrigley gifted his Mini-500 helicopter to the Royal Aviation Museum of Western Canada in Winnipeg last fall.

“They’ll show young people the wonderful things about aviation and down the road if they ever want to look at getting into it, this will guide them into that direction. When (the museum) told me this whole thing and they told me the layout of what they’re going to do, it gave me more of a good reason to give them the aircraft. Better to be there than sitting in a hanger collecting dust,” he said.

About 10,000 students from around Manitoba visit the museum every year and since aviation is in the Grade 5 and 6 curriculum, the museum is on most teacher’s lists.

“We’re happy to have the kids because we have three certified teachers on staff that are able to deliver educational programs,” said Joel Nelson, vice-president of operations for the museum.

Built in 1998, the Mini-500 is designed as a light helicopter that resembles a scaled down Hughes 500 and is powered by a two-stroke engine. The aircraft was used as a demonstrator craft for Revolutions Helicopters until the fall of 2000 and performed at the Winnipeg Airshow until 2004. From 2000 to 2006, Wrigley did aerial photography with the helicopter.

This is the second helicopter in the museum’s collection the first being a homebuilt helicopter from 1937 that was built in Manitoba by the Froebe brothers. It was the first helicopter to fly in Canada. Wrigley’s helicopter sits on the main floor for now but is slated to be moved to the second floor of the museum as a teaching tool in the museum’s Take Flight! program for school children in the Science of Flight area of the museum.

“(The helicopter) becomes an easier educational tool to be able to teach kids how the rotary aircraft fly because it will be right next to our Musketeer airplane that kids can crawl inside and learn how our fixed wing aircraft fly,” said Nelson.

Wrigley has been a helicopter pilot since 1981. He became interested in becoming a pilot in university after meeting a couple of helicopter pilots and after moving to Manitoba and speaking to a helicopter company he was hooked on the experience.

“It was very, very expensive. I don’t envy anyone who wants to finance the education of it because it’s not cheap. Basically, I would say that for today’s dollar, for what I did back then, I’m looking for well over $100,000. What you’re paying for is the flight time because the aircrafts are very expensive and you go through a lot of fuel and that’s where the expense comes. Just to go flying for one hour of training and you got to pay for it,” he said.

Wrigley built his helicopter over the span of six months using a kit he bought from Revolution Helicopters out of Missouri. He had to log all his 300 hours of building the helicopter with Transport Canada and because it was 51 percent built by himself it was classified as an experimental or home built aircraft. During flights, he also had to log in his flight data and maintenance for Transport Canada.

To build the aircraft it cost him less than $100,000 in today’s dollars. Wrigley said to buy an already built helicopter that is similar to his would cost $300,000.

“The main purpose of kit build aircraft such as the Mini-500 is that the average Joe if they really want to they can get one, whereas $300,000 is a bit of a different story,” he said.

When Wrigley decided to sell his aircraft, he knew finding a helicopter pilot that wanted his own craft would be difficult. So he reached out to the museum to see if they would be interested in having the helicopter.

“The donation of the Mini-500 by Derek is really important to the museum because what it does is allow us to have another cockpit experience for our guests,” said Nelson. “We’re told time and time again that guests really want to get a hands on feel for what it’s like to be a pilot whether it’s a pilot of a fixed wing aircraft or a rotary aircraft like Derek’s helicopter.

“The other thing that we’re happy for is that we only have one other helicopter in our collection. And the helicopter that we have is from 1937 and it represents the very first helicopter that ever flew in Canada, in fact it was built here in Manitoba. Between that very first one we didn’t have anything more recent. To have a donation of a helicopter from the 1990s is really an amazing thing to be able to show our visitors.”