www.PSFmagazine.com | February 2019 | 19 18 | February 2019 | Powered Sport Flying Human-Powered Flight Niall Paterson has just cycled a figure of eight around two pylons set 350m apart. No big deal, I hear you say; except he did it in an aircraft, not on a bicycle. And if it wasn’t enough becoming the first in the UK to complete the so-called Jacobson Figure of Eight, he then kept going for another turn. Niall’s feat in Aerocycle 3 was, for many, the highlight of the annual Icarus Cup, at Sywell Airfield, for human-powered aircraft. One spectator said he’d waited 60 years to see such a flight. The event has been organized for the past four years by the British Human-Powered Flying Club, with a total of £3000 ($3822 usd) in prize money. As you can imagine, with a power source of one human, the aircraft in the competition have to be extremely light. Airglow, for example, has a wingspan of 29m (95 feet) and weighs just 42kg (93 pounds). This makes them very flimsy and susceptible to wind, so they can only be flown very early in the morning or late in the evening. They have no ailerons and have a huge turning circle, so flying has to happen on a large airfield. As a result, it’s probably the world’s most impossible sport, relying on the confluence of extreme physical power, difficult engineering, tricky piloting and in this case the British weather. The world’s first true human-powered flight was in Sumpac, the Southampton University man-powered aircraft, in 1961. It was flown 64m (210 feet) by Derek Piggott. After that the sport advanced rapidly, and in 1979 Paul MacCready’s team flew the Gossamer Albatross across the English Channel, winning the £100,000 ($127,346 usd) Kremer Prize. Two Kremer prizes remain: £50,000 ($63,673 usd) for a 26-mile marathon course completed in under an hour, and £100,000 $127,346 usd) for a sporting aircraft challenge stressing maneuverability and handling in relatively high winds. Flying hpas is difficult, time consuming, and frustrating but unique, and despite how impractical it is, somehow worth it. I am having microlight lessons and have flown 10 hours in a C42, but I didn’t fully get hpas until I first saw Airglow take off. As it gathered airspeed, the wings lifted into an elegant crescent dihedral, then a few moments later the aircraft lifted off the ground. It felt like magic. Niall told me that whenever he makes a flight, the first thing that goes through his mind is: “I am doing something that should not be possible.” John Boyce, who has over 30 years experience in everything from twin-engine aircraft to microlights, said: “I’ve always said I can jump in any plane and make a reasonable job of flying it. Not so Airglow!” “The control stick is a tiny microswitch, much like on a model controller. It ’s incredibly sensitive in pitch and incredibly insensitive in roll, which is achieved through yaw, as no ailerons.” “So you have to balance the tiny fore-and-aft movements which have instant response with big bold left and right ones which have massive lag. “And to make the job of taming this beast a bit harder, while performing surgical movements with one hand, the rest of your body is engaged in an Olympian workout, legs thrashing at full power and lungs bursting.” John Boyce in Airglow Zak Moore flying the Aerocycle Image by David Brown Support Our Advertisers “If you back off the power with your legs, you have to immediately compensate with pitch or you will stall. I know; I did it. And you’ve got about five seconds to get the hang of flying it before you wreck its fragile skeleton.” This year the winning team was Aerocycle 3 with 10,790 points, and Airglow came second with 6943 points. Human-powered flying may be aviation’s most niche sport–more people have gone into space than have flown an hpa–and the ratio of flying time to hours of build is probably 1:1000. Finding pilots is also challenging. I asked John how he prepared for the event. “Lots of hill climbing. You have to be fit, that ’s for sure, but I soon realised there’s a lot more to it than being a strong cyclist. You need to apply the power smoothly, otherwise the airframe just shakes and flexes, absorbing all your precious energy instead of transferring it to the propeller,” he said. Even with just two aircraft in the competition, this year counts as one of the most successful in hpa achievements, with a total of 13 pilots flying. Team Airglow helped to introduce a record number of five new pilots to the sport this year, and Aerocycle 3 formed an international team featuring two American pilots. As John Boyce said: “The aircraft are things of great beauty, and if you can switch off from the frenetic activity which accompanies every launch, you find yourself marveling at the graceful curve of the insect-like wings which take the lonely pilot aloft.” “Every successful flight in an hpa is a small miracle of aviation.” Anyone interested in joining in, volunteering for or sponsoring the Icarus Cup can contact the British Human-Powered Flying Club at bhpfc.info@gmail.com.• Weight saving efforts could be found everywhere, including the joystick flight controls.
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