Showers-Aero (also called Ben Showers Aero) was an American aerospace design firm based in

Milton, Pennsylvania Milton is a borough in Northumberland County, Pennsylvania, United States, on the West Branch Susquehanna River, north of Harrisburg, located in Central Pennsylvania's Susquehanna River Valley. It is approximately 10 miles upriver from the mouth ...

. The company specialized in the design of

helicopter A helicopter is a type of rotorcraft in which lift and thrust are supplied by horizontally spinning rotors. This allows the helicopter to take off and land vertically, to hover, and to fly forward, backward and laterally. These attributes ...

s in the form of plans for amateur construction.Purdy, Don: ''AeroCrafter - Homebuilt Aircraft Sourcebook, Fifth Edition'', page 331. BAI Communications, 15 July 1998. Ben Showers formed the company as part of his work redesigning the Adams-Wilson Choppy helicopter, a program that resulted in the single-seat Showers Skytwister or "Choppy". The Skytwister incorporated a new powerplant, the twin cylinder, liquid-cooled,

two-stroke A two-stroke (or two-stroke cycle) engine is a type of internal combustion engine that completes a Thermodynamic power cycle, power cycle with two strokes (up and down movements) of the piston during one power cycle, this power cycle being comple ...

, dual-ignition Rotax 582 powerplant with a 2.58:1 reduction drive gearbox, to replace the original A/W Choppy's motorcycle engine. The Skytwister also used a new design tail boom, cockpit and windshield. By 1998 it was reported that 200 sets of plans had been sold and 12 aircraft were flying.

Aircraft

References

{{Reflist Defunct aircraft manufacturers of the United States Homebuilt aircraft Helicopters