Professor Wants to Land Pet Plane

A Business School associate professor will appear before a joint meeting of the Cambridge City Council and Cambridge Planning Board on Monday, June 12, to convince members that the city needs several tiny airports.

Mark Fortune, director of the Planning Board, announced the meeting yesterday. Lynn L. Bollinger, associate professor of Business Administration, will do the talking for the Helio Aircraft Corporation, headed by himself and Otto C. Koppen, M.I.T. professor of Aeronautics.

It started almost two years ago when Koppen designed a new airplane--the helioplane--not to be confused with a helicopter. The helioplane is a high-wing, 145-horsepower airplane with an over-large propeller, that can take off and land in an area the size of a large tennis court, can fly as slow as 27 miles per hour in perfect control, and cannot stall and spin under any circumstances.

Koppen got together with Bollinger last year and had the first plane built in Norwood, where three demonstration samples are now being constructed. The corporation was formed with the aid of a group of Mid-west businessmen. The planes will be built commercially by the Aeronea Aircraft Corporation of Middleton, Ohio.

For the past year Bollinger has been demonstrating the agility of the plane with takeoffs and landings on Soldiers Field, behind the Business School, and on the football field at M.I.T. Speeches before the Cambridge Rotary Club and other civic groups have interested many local residents in the feasibility of providing local landing facilities.

Fortune disclosed that the purpose of the joint meeting is to investigate the possibility of landing and parking space in this locality. The problem has been in the exploratory stage for the past month. "We still don't know if the fields are feasible in urban areas that are densely built up," the planning director said.

Suggestions for landing sites from several sources include Observatory Hill and sections of the west end of the city. The helioplane will land on practically anything, according to Koppen, and the only consideration is the granting of space by the city