I stumbled across your site looking for pictures of a plane I worked on almost 20 years ago ... the Water World plane. http://impdb.org/index.php?title=Waterworld
I can confirm the plane was a Helio Courier. If my memory serves me correctly it orginally served in Vietnam as an Army scout plane. It was brought state side and sold as surplus after the war. It was purchased by a gentleman in Kentucky who kept it in an a disassembled state in old barn. The Water World production company contracted San Diego Seaplanes to provide them with a plane that could (as you see in one of the pictures and the movie) pull a number of water skiers behind it. They purchased it from the gentleman in Kentucky, and that's how it ended up in the movie.
I know this because I was a student studying Aerospace engineering at San Diego State at the time and the owner of San Diego Sea planes came to our school to see if anyone would be willing to assist in assembling the plane. We weren't told at the time what the project was (there was a veil of secrecy around the whole movie) and a couple of my classmates were selected to participate. Not being one to take "no" for an answer I coaxed which airport they would be at out of one of the other students and armed with no more information than that ... headed out that Saturday morning to see if I could "make myself useful."
After about an hour walking around Brown Field a couple pilots said they'd seen some guys assembling an old plane in a hangar around the corner. When I showed up I saw my classmates and knew it was the right place. A bit nervous I walked up to see the owner wasn't there but one of his foreman was and I informed him I was a university student there to help. Not knowing any better he put me to work. "Work" included removing a rat carcass and several other nasty things from the fuselage and cleaning it. When that was done I helped with specs for a 'bullet to help slide a wing bolt to attach the wings into place. Over time we put holes in the side to make it look like it's been in the apocalypse and painted the sides. Some of the more senior guys worked on attaching the pontoons. All in all it was a fun experience. A special note: the plane never pulled anyone behind it. I guess we did our job of making it look beat up too well. The plane barely flew. They used a helicopter to pull the skiers and then with a bit of Hollywood movie magic stitched the films together. I hope you find this information fun and useful.
Regards,
Erik
