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Human Powered Helicopter
marcopo writes "In response to a 24 year old prize challenge from the American Helicopter Society, a number of engineering students at the University of British Columbia have designed a human powered helicopter. The prize requirements are 3 minutes flight at 3 meters, with only human power, and the team, led by UBC's Mike Georgallis, plans a test flight next Tuesday.
The Vancouver Sun also has the
story."
Those wings have a huge volume, you should be able to get pretty good lift if you filled them with helium. Of course I don't know what the rules would say.
"It's so convenient to have a system where everyone is a criminal" - A. Hitler
Can they use a battery? As in charge the battery using human power and then run the motor off the battery power???
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Programming is like sex... Make one mistake and support it the rest of your life.
3 Meters is a pretty high distance to fall from, even without being surrounded by fast moving metal, cogs, and chains. Considering that they'll want to optimize the weight of the machine, there will almost certainly be no safety cage or equipment.
I sure as hell wouldn't want to pilot it.
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afaik it's quite hard to build a human powered plane (yes, someone made it from France to England many years ago). A helicopter is much trickier, because the pilot must run two rotors at the same time. It's not easy to transfer human energy to two places without adding much weight. I'm not an expert in helicopters, but it's kinda obvious to me that the pilot would have to use extraordinary effort to stay above the ground for 3 minutes.
I don't read replies by ACs.
Could something like this eventually be as common as the bicycle? I, for one, think it would be pretty cool to fly to work everyday.
Reminds me of watching the Jetsons as a kid LOL
Mod points are pointless when you browse at -1.
i wonder why they went with the recombent position rather than a upright postion. i would imagine you get a little extra power upright. you're not worried about airdynamics when hovering also.
Supreme executive power derives from a mandate from the masses, not from some farcical aquatic ceremony.
In case anyone here doesnt know about generating watts, 500 sustained for over 3 minutes is quite a task. I have been rowing for 7 years and this year our team had physiological testing where we started at 200 watts and increased by 50 every 2 minutes. I last about 8 minutes and managed to hit about 400 watts but couldnt hold it long enough to be allowed to continue to 450. We increased in this manner in order to find our VO2 maxes, and certainly had I started at 500 watts I could have held it for a while, maybe a minute and a half. But 3 minutes is just sick. Especially since this was on the rowing machine which uses all muscles and this guy is only uses his legs, no back and arms. This 3 minute test will generate enough lactic acid to kill the average 60 year old man, and will certainly leave him in excruciating pain if he is able to do it at all.
BAH, we have one of these teams at my school too (University of Michigan).
Although i will admit i didn't RTFA, it's not news unless it actually FLIES. This has been tried and failed many many times already.
Aside from that, let me attack your points.
I consider 10 feet or 3 meters to be high enough to cause significant injury to a simple terran.
The gears and chains are made out of metal if you look at the pictures. Have you ever heard of such things being made of composites? That would be quite bizarre.
Ground effect is the only decent bit of info you mention. For those who aren't aware, ground effect is the phenomenon by which a helicopter rests on a cushion of air bounded by the ground and the rotor disc. The area in which it is useful exists roughly at an altitude equal to the diameter of the rotor disc. It's essential for all low-powered flight, especially an emergency autorotation landing in something over than an autogyro.
"Helicopter flying books?" I assume you mean rotary-wing aerodynamics books. I've read some; they're quite good.
...for a motorised version.
;)
Whilst there's something undeniably cool about what basically amounts to an airborne bicycle, I'd settle for an airborne moped. Using a small (~1-2 bhp) moped engine would make for only a minor weight increase, and it would surely make for less sweat
I'm a certificated pilot (fixed-wing) who's flown helicopters (a Robinson R22 Beta) once, and that was so incredibly fun that I'd hop in an ultralight homebuilt chopper in a second. Just let me know where to buy the kit.
p
In Korea, long hair is for old people!
Both the pilot and the contest are 24. I suspect UBC's genetic engineering program started on the engineer when the contest was first announced....It has nothing to do with the chopper design and everything to do with the pilot. ;-)
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Why would you want a human powered helicopter?
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Uhm, because... Sometimes, you just do something for the sake of doing it.
Seriously. How is it a waste of time or money? The people who are doing this probably have no medical knowledge that could help cure cancer.
Speaking of a waste of time, back to reading more inane comments on