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Flying Bicycle Is Real, Takes First Flight

Posted by Soulskill on from the yes,-you-were-definitely-the-first-one-to-think-of-an-ET-joke dept.

colinneagle writes "Bringing us one step closer to the hover-boards and flying cars that mid-20th century pop culture had predicted we would have by the year 2000, three Czech companies have come together to develop a functional flying bicycle. Designed by Technodat, Evektor, and Duratec, the flying bicycle weighs a little more than 187 lbs and limits its takeoff weight to about 350 lbs, according to a report from Polish bicycle news site Biketrendy. The report claims the bicycle, which is still just a prototype, is capable of staying in the air for about six minutes, although the companies working on the project hope to extend that to 50 minutes and top speeds of about 30 miles per hour. Currently, the fans propelling the bicycle are powered by a 50Ah battery."

3 of 123 comments (clear)

  1. That's what Area 51 does by Animats · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Seriously I think the greatest invention of the 21st C could be silent fans.

    The USAF has been working on "stealth helicopters" for years. They haven't been able to make them silent, but they can make them sound like wind noise, eliminating the distinctive "whap-whap-whap" blade sounds.

    1. Re:That's what Area 51 does by TubeSteak · · Score: 4, Interesting

      The USAF has been working on "stealth helicopters" for years. They haven't been able to make them silent, but they can make them sound like wind noise, eliminating the distinctive "whap-whap-whap" blade sounds.

      The first trick is spreading the noise out over a larger range of frequencies.
      You can accomplish this by changing the rotor blade spacing to reduce harmonics.
      So instead of equally spaced rotors, the distance between them is unequal, which mitigates that whap-whap-whap sound.

      The second big method involves actively "flapping" the rotors.
      This lets you change the plane of the rotor just enough to miss the vortex from the previous rotation.
      By always traveling through smooth air, you can minimize uneven pressure waves which create noise.

      The rest of the tweaks are aerodynamic adjustments to the blade tips/materials/shape.
      And last but not least, throttle back and reduce the rotor speed.

      --
      [Fuck Beta]
      o0t!
  2. Re:Gossamer Albatross by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    There have been around 100 successful human-powered aircraft built over the years. The problem is they're not useful because we're not that powerful. A helicopter-type aircraft needs ~600W to lift a human, and only a few humans can put out that kind of power for any non-trivial period. A fixed-wing aircraft can get by with less power -- on the order of 300W in clean air w/ground effect -- but even that is a lot of power for the average person (~150W is a more typical number for an hour, and over the course of several hours ~75W).