Last night, Chris Leonardi let me know that Make:Online had republished the “Head-Mounted Water Cannon” story that I wrote for Make: Volume 7.

Which gave me a chance to marvel all over again at the awesome photos that Julie Gottesman took in 2005 of the World-Famous Pontani Sisters at the American Helicopter Museum in West Chester. I had wanted a Fisher Price Adventure People vibe, with some James Bond and also Evel Nkievel on the side, all in a big cheesecake box, and MAN was I unprepared for what they achieved:

There are some more of Julie’s pictures on Flickr. Tara Pontani rides, and she had a great time zooming the sidecar rig up the runway, then doing a hairpin turn with the wheel in the air and roaring back, power-sliding in front of the camera while Julie snapped the pictures. Well, that’s how I choose to remember it.

And that’s even before we worked up the nerve to approach the fellow that had just landed a blue Jet Ranger II helicopter nearby and asked if we could take some pictures with him. That’s how we met Augie DelCoughlin and Don Johnson’s helicopter!

Augie will power the “Summon Helicopter” iPhone 3.0 app that I want to create, even if it’s just a proof-of-concept. Use case:

• STEP 1: Open “Summon Helicopter” app and push red button
• STEP 2: Augie DelCoughlin arrives, hovers, drops ladder
• OPTIONAL EXTRAS: To be arranged ahead of time. For instance: “sinister men with topknots wearing suits, carrying briefcases and katana”, just like somethingawful described.

I’ve spoken to Augie about this, and as long as you don’t mind some niggling details (it will take Augie several hours to arrive; the list of places where you can drop a ladder is vanishingly small; each pickup would cost several hundred dollars), I think the app will work just fine! Who wants to beta-test?