Flying Bicycle Is Real, Takes First Flight

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."

Comments

Noisy isn't it.

[davesag]

Seriously I think the greatest invention of the 21st C could be silent fans. That bike looks like great fun but the noise is a killer.

Re:Noisy isn't it.

[Spy Handler]

Maybe they could attach Dyson bladeless fans on it.

No Buffeting!

Re:Noisy isn't it.

[xevioso]

Speaking as an anorexic child-size styrofoam dummy, I can say that that actually doesn't look like much fun. We prefer to remain completely immobile, staring off into space. But I would image you humans would get a kick out of riding such a thing.

Re:Noisy isn't it.

[Alsee]

350 pound flight capacity minus 187 pound vehicle weight seems to indicate a 163 pound (74 kilo) passenger limit. Not great, but that's certainly not "anorexic child-size styrofoam dummy" either. I'm an adult male, I could get there if I cut out the peanutbuttercups and switched to diet soda.

Oh well, I guess that means I'm never going to be able to ride it. Diet soda is vile.
How about they work on inventing that? Soda that tastes like sugar-water without being sugar-water? Chuckle.

-

not a bicycle

[optikos]

electric scooter or motorcycle maybe, but no flight via manual pedal-power-only means not a flying bicycle

Re:not a bicycle

[ShanghaiBill]

Now - something purely human-powered that could fly would be impressive, but this is not.

It might be impressive, but it would not be new. Flying bicycles have been around for a while. The Gossamer Albatross was pedaled over the English Channel in 1979, a distance of over 22 miles.

The hard part is not getting a bicycle to fly, but to get it to hover with human power.

Not bicycle powered?

[TsuruchiBrian]

If it's not powered by pedaling, then what's the point of the bicycle part? You just bolt a bicycle to the inside of the cockpit of a 747 and then say it's a flying bicycle. Not only that you probably don't even have to do much testing to be sure it will work.

Re:Not bicycle powered?

[b4upoo]

You are spot on. It is a quad copter and it could be a bicycle or a rowboat in the center. It is interesting that a 50ah battery can power it for five minutes.
                  It will be a lot more interesting when one of these things sets down of pedestrians and becomes a multi station guillotine.

Gossamer Albatross

[Danzigism]

The Gossamer Albatross is a human-powered aircraft built by American aeronautical engineer Dr. Paul B. MacCready's company AeroVironment. On June 12, 1979 it completed a successful crossing of the English Channel to win the second Kremer prize. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gossamer_Albatross I'd like to see more of these. This was over 30 years ago. C'mon people.

Re:Gossamer Albatross

[Anonymous Coward]

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).

odd definition

[tverbeek]

So by "flying bicycle" they mean "personal hovercraft built around a bicycle".

Besides, wasn't something like the Gossamer Condor (built way back when I was a lad, in the 1970s) closer to the concept of a "flying bicycle"? Pedal powered, and able to fly, and it even had two wheels.

ETless

[Rixel]

Look Ma, no alien!

That's what Area 51 does

[Animats]

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.

Re:That's what Area 51 does

[wonkey_monkey]

eliminating the distinctive "whap-whap-whap" blade sounds.

No mom, it was a helicopter!

Re:That's what Area 51 does

[TubeSteak]

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.