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Gamera II Team Smashes Previous Best Human-Powered Helicopter Flight Time
Zothecula writes "For over 30 years, the $250,000 for the American Helicopter Society's Igor I. Sikorsky Human Powered Helicopter Competition prize has looked decidedly secure, but Gamera II has changed all that. Last week, Clark School of Engineering team pilots came close to breaking one of the competition's major milestones. Ph.D. candidate from Kyle Gluesenkamp from the School's mechanical engineering department, hand-cranking and pedaling like his life depended on it, managed to keep the huge quad-rotor craft aloft for 50 seconds, an impressive new world record that's currently awaiting validation by the National Aeronautic Association (NAA)." We previously covered their attempt to break the record last May.
Gamera is REALLY NEAT.
Gamera is FULL OF MEAT.
We all love you, GAMERA!
Although the summary doesn't state it, the Clark School of Engineering is part of the University of Maryland at College Park.
Seems to me they could break 1 minute easily with a better cyclist and maybe better gearing ratios?
Until then, have a look at the following video of Gluesenkamp's awe-inspiring record flight
I'm sorry, I didn't even realize he had lifted off the ground. Awe-inspiring isn't exactly the word I'd use.
That would basically render the whole exercise pointless, because any energy-storage device on-board the craft could be powered by any form of energy. For instance, if you could build a giant 8-seat helicopter and power it with electric batteries, then even a human could "power" it by using an exercise bike to charge the batteries, very slowly, over the course of days or months. I think the whole idea is to make a craft that's so light that a human can power it directly; by storing energy, you can make the craft as big and heavy as you want.
No. The rules http://www.vtol.org/awards-and-contests/human-powered-helicopter/hph-rules (Rule 4.1.4) say that you can not use any form of stored energy. They exclude the rotors, of course.
A somewhat more practical device could be a hydrid airship/helicopter. Keep it heavier than air, but use a hydrogen-filled balloon to counter most of the weight and cycle power to carry the rest. Unfortunately, it would still be large, but the helicopter part could be substantially smaller.
They're taking massive advantage of ground effect, and are using the distributed rotors to magnify the effect more than a single rotor could. That's probably the primary reason they did so well.
The entire thing seems to be an exercise in futility. Helicopters aren't very efficient. I'd be much more interested in seeing more of the human-powered-glider competitions. Those guys can keep them up in the air quite a lot longer.
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
That's a good question. However, as an engineer, I feel obliged to point out that this exercise, while interesting, has absolutely zero practicality or usefulness. Even if you could reduce the helicopter's mass to zero, the amount of energy a human would have to expend to keep himself aloft is staggering. Obviously, a fit human can do it for a minute or three, an athlete like Lance Armstrong might be able to keep it up for 5-10, but that's it; after that, they'll be crashing.
Not only that, this test isn't very realistic as far as helicopters are concerned: they're not far enough away from the ground. Close to the ground, you get the in-ground hover effect, which reduces the amount of power you need to stay aloft. Over 10 feet or so, you go into out-of-ground effect, and then your power requirements increase significantly. In-ground effect is only useful for taxiing to your runway or helipad; if you want to hover anywhere else, you're generally doing it out-of-ground. So even a fit human will have a much harder time keeping that up for long, even with a zero-mass machine. There's a reason birds have hollow bones, and why even hummingbirds (which hover rather than glide) have very limited flight durations, despite their tiny size and mass.