Introduced in 2006, the Robinson R88 – an eight-seat multi-purpose helicopter – remained in experimental development at a secret facility near Gold Coast, Australia until it was finally abandoned in 2008.

This is virtually a true story, but it didn’t actually happen.

In September of 2006, a member of pprune.org, the “Professional Pilot’s Rumor Network”, posted a fairly crude but interesting photoshop of how a seven-passenger Robinson evolution may appear:

For the next 2 years the poster, “Capt Hollywood”, and members of the forum participated in developing the ship, adjusting the center of balance, power plant, exhaust, retactable undercarrage, and eventually including machine guns and JATO vector rockets.

You can see the whole forum thread here: http://www.pprune.org/rotorheads/209292-new-robinson-r88.html.