Here's the youtube version of the successful flight on Thursday 5-12-11 of the University of Maryland 'Gamera' human powered helicopter. It's an impressive accomplishment no matter how you look at it.
Congratulations to the entire Gamera team and to pilot/powerplant Judy Wexler - first woman to fly a human powered helicopter!
After unsuccessfully attempting to fly their human powered helicopter name 'Gamera' on Wednesday May 11th (2011), the group of 50 graduate and undergraduate students from the University of Maryland gave it another go on Thursday… and all of this was streamed live on the internet! The screenshot above shows that they did indeed get off the ground with female pilot Judy Wexler providing the power - which regardless of the duration creates a record flight since no woman has flown the other two successful human powered helicopters from the past. The flight appears to have lasted several seconds and got somewhere near a foot off the gym floor, so their first major milestone of getting off the ground has been reached!
At this point the flight record is still unofficial, but at approximately 5:25pm EDT, the human powered helicopter Gamera appears to have flown!
'Gamera' pilot/powerplant Judy Wexler - first female to fly a human powered helicopter
Ultimately they hope to be able win the $250,000 Sikorsky Prize by flying for a duration of 60 seconds and reaching an altitude of 3 meters while remaining in a 10 meter square. The Sikorsky Prize was established in 1980 and so far no one has been able to achieve the requirements. The existing endurance record is just 19.46 seconds set by 'Yuri l' back in 1994 in Japan.
The Gamera empty weight is just 101 pounds, and the gross weight with the pilot onboard is just 208 pounds, so you know the structure is extremely light, which also makes it very fragile. The challenge of creating a mechanical system that can turn four rotors without failing at that weight is very difficult and is the primary reason that the goals of the Sikorsky Prize have not yet been met.
Congratulations to the University of Maryland Gamera team for their great success so far… and watch for more details on this flight coming soon.
Gamera's 4x42' rotor system and framework - empty weight: 101 pounds
After a rocky start (hehe), Yves Rossy has indeed made his Jetman flight thru, around, or over the Grand Canyon. News is just now cracking about the event, but according to some sources, the flight actually took place on Saturday, one day after the original plan and away from the media.
Regardless, this slightly hyped yet nonetheless cool achievement appears to have taken place without any trouble. Watch the video, please, so we can all get back to life as usual : )
Illustration of the all new 'Synergy' aircraft from John McGinnis in Montana
These illustrations and the 1/4 scale model seen here are of an all new aircraft called Synergy that's getting close to being completed in full scale form. Even more, this aircraft truly represents a 'synergy' of advanced aerodynamic ideas that just might see it revolutionize the world of aviation. It's some pretty exciting stuff that I've actually been aware of for two years now but wasn't at liberty to speak of. I'm hopeful that designer/builder John McGinnis is able to prove what appears to be a real quantum leap forward in aerodynamic performance.
John McGinnis with the 1/4 scale flying model of the Synergy aircraft
The ideas incorporated into the Synergy aircraft have been a lot of what John has been sharing for over a year now at Oshkosh365.com in the Beyond Streamling: Drag reduction in the 21st century thread. There's 15 pages of discussion there with over 51,000 views... and it's all very fascinating to read thru. I also posted about the thread back in June 2010. And tho John is essentially an unknown, you can see from that thread that he has a very detailed understanding of aerodynamics, and seems to have the facts to back up the things he believes. If you were at either of his forums at Oshkosh 2010, then you know this all the more.
The pilot-up-front-and-4-pax-behind seating configuration of the 5 seat Synergy
While the Synergy has a rather large cross section fuselage, the overall dimensions are actually somewhat compact. The prototype is being built with a 200hp 2-stroke, V-4 DeltaHawk turbo diesel engine, and as you can see from the drawing above, the airframe design is all very clean and simple. One of the lessons John has been pushing is that an efficient fuselage doesn't have to be narrow and cramped. Synergy aims to offer unparalleled efficiency while also providing a vastly improved interior experience.
1/4 scale RC model of the Synergy aircraft in flight (all images: Synergy via EAA)
I saw a video of the 1/4 scale RC model in flight 2 years ago and it was then that I could see without a doubt that this design holds a lot (as in A LOT!) of promise. John has been aiming for the 2011 CAFE Green Flight Challenge event to prove that his ideas are all for real... hopefully he'll have it all pulled together for the July 11-17 event in Santa Rosa, California. Regardless, Synergy stands a very credible chance of making the biggest leap forward in aerodynamics that we've seen in flying machines since the glory days of the late 1940's and the 1950's ushered in the era of supersonic flight.
This is a very exciting time to be paying attention to what's going on in the sky!
(click pic for hi-res) Dave Williams' homebuilt Dyke Delta at Oshkosh 2010
There's quite a story to go with this Dyke Delta (N18DW) built and owned by Dave Williams. In fact, after you click on this CoolPix image (so you can see it really big) you should go read this EAA Sport Aviation story about Dave's Dyke Delta experience - originally completing the airplane way back in 1972, and then rebuilding it about 25 years later.
I find the Dyke Delta to be one of the most amazing aviation accomplishments (homebuilt or otherwise) that still doesn't seem to get the attention it deserves. I also think this proven design is aching for a carbon fiber version that would be lighter and substantially more low-drag. It's already a great performer, so a plastic version would really scoot! Plus, I think that seating arrangement of pilot up front and 2 or 3 in the back on a bench seat is really slick. Maybe that's one of the things that keeps people away tho... I dunno, but I sure think it's a magnificent flying machine.
You can definitely put a Dyke Delta in my fantasy hangar : )
Like I mentioned yesterday, I'm just a tad obsessed with the Pitts Model 12. Here are two more nearly perfect examples to check out. The blue one being refueled belongs to Greg Connell, and the red one is Kendal Simpson's with the cowling off showing the fab M-14 radial engine that makes the 12 the beast that it is. Wow.
This STOL Zenith CH 750 was getting ready to head back home to Georgia. It was on display at the Zenith booth to replace the one that had been blown over in the big storm on Thursday. Several vendors faced some serious challenges in trying to do business in the storms aftermath.
My Saturday morning at Sun-n-Fun 2011 started at the commercial exhibits not far from the camping area. This yellow and white biplane stood out right away as something special. Obviously not 'Pitts' special, but very cool nonetheless. It's the Fk12 Comet, a Rotax 912 LSA that promises fun in a way pretty much no other LSA could even dream about. The wings are fabric covered, but the structure underneath is all composite, and the fuselage is mostly welded steel tube with aluminum tube for the aft section. Lots of interesting and innovative thinking in this light, sporty, aircraft!
The American Legend display of modern Cubs included one with no fabric on it so all of the structure was visible. The use of modern materials and a variety of interesting design changes takes the timeless original Cub design even closer to perfection. I'm still dreaming about the one from yesterday on amphibious floats!
After being hit so hard by the tornado on Thursday, the Air Cam display was looking almost back together. I was glad to see they hadn't given up after losing 4 airplanes... hopefully they'll head back home with several new orders on the books to take some of the sting out of a really rough year at SNF11.
With the damaging storm of Thursday over and gone, Friday began with a lot of mud on the Sun-n-Fun grounds. This scene above is oddly reminiscent of Oshkosh 2010 where muddy roads like this were all over. In another similarity to Oshkosh, wet grounds and mud weren't about to dampen the spirit of the event, and Friday wound up being a great day at SNF11.
A quick run thru the commercial exhibit area first thing Friday morning revealed several vendors still in the process of cleaning up after the storm. Many of the temporary structures had collapsed as you would expect in such high winds. Some vendors were fortunate to only have displays damaged. Others, like the Air Cam people were left with a tremendous amount of damage to their aircraft.
Three different Air Cam's can be seen in these pictures with devastating damage. A fourth airplane had been blown backward across the display area and also wound up with significant damage. Reports are indicating that the storm was possibly a tornado, and the very localized damage as seen here would seem to support that idea.
You had me at Dyke Delta... seriously, that's all it took to get my mouth watering. This recent video is from the Texas Indoor New Year (TINY) event that featured all kinds of cool and unusual indoor electric aircraft. The video is from youtuber sr71afan who might know is the guy with the too-cool-for-words 10 foot span (5.4 pound) C-47. And the Dark Delta VTOL video too! These guys do really cool stuff : )
The awesome model flying in this video is patterned after John Dyke's very unusual delta shaped homebuilt aircraft from the mid 1960's. The real Dyke Delta could never dream of doing those wildly tight inside and outside loops like this model, but it still was a truly fantastic achievement from about every angle. Even tho only about 50 have been built over all those years, it's regarded as a great airplane with a realistic ability to carry 4 people and cruise at about 180 mph on 180 hp. Those numbers are great even by today's standards which tells you how far ahead of its time this little flying machine was. Plus, the pilot in front and three seats behind him cabin arrangement meant that most of the pax were very close to the CG. This also means that the two outside pax have amazing leg room! One other unique feature is that the wings were designed to easily fold flat over the fuselage allowing the airplane to be towed down the road.
The forward-thinking and overall versatility of the Dyke delta is just awesome... I think this little gem of an airplane needs to gain some modern-day popularity. Maybe this little video can get a few more mouths watering!
I first brought up the idea of a Grand Slam homebuilt airplane in the middle of last year. It's the idea of a homebuilt that could very effectively capture four important elements: Affordable - Great Performance (but not too hard to fly) - Easy To Build - Electrifying Looks. The good ole BD-5 was supposed to be that airplane 40 years ago, but a variety of obstacles got in the way. And in my mind, the definitive Grand Slam homebuilt has still never materialized. But now, the Onex from Sonex is beginning to show signs that it's aiming for the fence with the bases loaded!
A few important points here first. There are some really good 2-place homebuilt airplanes that offer great value, performance and looks. You can go way back to the days of the Long-EZ or early Glasair or Lancair designs, or maybe the RV-4 or 6... but bigger airplanes with bigger engines, or maybe relatively high kit cost make all those airplanes either pretty expensive to complete or complicated to build, or maybe both. In my mind, the real Grand Slam is almost surely a single seat airplane cuz that's how you're really gonna keep the costs down. And while there have been many great airplanes that are affordable and maybe easy to build, the ones that combine all four of the elements above are either hard to find or simply don't exist. Of course beauty is in the eye of the beholder, so you may not agree with my opinion on the looks side of things, but I honestly believe that the Onex from Sonex comes closer than any homebuilt to being that special combination that can be considered a Grand Slam.
The Onex on its first flight on January 27, 2011
And even tho the Onex is still just a prototype, the more I'm seeing about the details of this little 'sport fighter', the more I'm impressed. The video below from a few weeks back (shot from the cockpit) really helps to point to the Onex's game winning plans.
With extremely simple structural design that borrows from the very successful Sonex line, and the overall small size of the airplane, you get affordable knocked out pretty quickly. It's looking like a completed airplane should be possible at about 20K without any hardcore scrounging. The AeroVee (VW derived engine) making 80hp for just under $7,000 goes a long way toward making the airplane both affordable and a great performer. Even tho straight and level cruise is around 135 mph, the Vne on the Onex is 216 mph! And when you take those pleasing lines and great proportions and add some flashy paint like my drawing above, and you've got one hot looking little flying machine.
So watch the video from inside the cockpit and imagine yourself out having some cheap fun on a sweet sunny day. And keep watch for info from Sonex on exact kit pricing and availability... cuz when this Grand Slam clears the fence, avgeeks all over the world will be the winners!
Friday, May 13, 2011 at 10:26AM 
