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unixronin: Galen the technomage, from Babylon 5: Crusade (Default)
Unixronin

December 2012

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Friday, September 24th, 2010 02:58 pm

Cnews is reporting that a University of Toronto student has built and successfully flown a human-powered aircraft with flapping wings.

Look at the video, though.  It can't get airborne under its own power; it gets off the ground only by virtue of a cable tow from a vehicle.  According to the article,

[...] Reichert climbed aboard, flapped its massive wings through a system of pulleys by pedalling his feet, and took off, sustaining altitude and airspeed for 19.3 seconds, and covering a distance of 145 metres at 25.6 km/h.

Um ... no.  That's not what appears to be shown in that video.  What that video shows is Reichert's "Snowbird" being towed aloft, then, after the tether is dropped, being apparently unable to maintain airspeed (though it is admittedly difficult to judge from this angle) and, shortly, altitude after he runs out of airspeed.  I would venture to bet that a half-decent sailplane designed for speeds that low could have glided further from that initial tow than Reichert's craft was able to stay aloft.

My call?  Sorry, but I see this less as a human-powered aircraft, than as an ultralight sailplane that — once towed aloft — manages to stay briefly aloft not because of, but in spite of its flapping-wing mechanism.

Show me a "human-powered" flapping aircraft that can actually take off — even briefly — under its own power, like the human-powered Gossamer Condor, and then I'll be impressed.  But a "human-powered aircraft" that manages to glide less than 500 feet after being towed to what looks like about 20 feet altitude by a car?  Honestly, a 25:1 glide ratio is pretty shabby these days.  That's 1930s glider performance.  Modern open-class sailplanes, despite smaller wingspans and much greater weight than the Snowbird, can achieve almost three times that.  With 32m of wing and so little weight, Snowbird's glide performance should be phenomenal, not mediocre.

It's a start, and it's closer than anyone else has come yet.  But I won't consider it a human-powered aircraft until it can get itself airborne by human power alone.