EYE ON SPORTS YOU SAY YOU'RE A BIG SPORTS FAN; would like to see major sporting events from a different perspective; and like the idea of flying a rare, classic general aviation airplane? Then you'd love flying for Winged Vision Incorporated. Winged Vision says it's the world's largest sports aerial photography company, and it relies heavily on its two Helio Courier H-295s to feed television networks with video imagery of a wide variety of sports events. Winged Vision's president, Robert Mikkelson, says his company covers roughly 150 sports events per year-sometimes flying six to seven jobs per week during the peak fall season. About 60 percent of those jobs make use of the Helio Couriers. The rest involve Mikkelson using one of his high-definition camera rigs aboard MetLife's blimps-Snoopy One and Snoopy Two-or one of Goodyear's blimps. What's it like to fly a Helio Courier? I have flown with Winged Vision covering the 2000 U.S. Senior Open Golf Championship ("Helio's Macho Machines," January 2001 AOPA Pilot) and I can tell you that it's both a rush and a very specialized kind of flying. To know what I mean, you need to know a little about the Helio Courier. 64 | AOPA PILOT June 2014 Behind the bird's-eye view BY THOMAS A. HORNE PHOTOGRAPHY BY CHRIS ROSE