man-powered airplane

Read this about the guy who won the prize.

I would like to locate some art wurk from private flight projects if I

On Feb 28, 1:11 pm, "Bo" wrote:

Mr Marcos, During the latter part of 1976 , I was privileged to be a member of a design team that worked on a privately funded "human powered" flight project headed and funded by two Private Investors. One had an extensive Aeronautical background, and the other was a Mechanical Engineer of some renoun. They too, were in pursuit of a $100,000 prize, but more importantly, to them anyway, were their hopes of being recognized as serious contenders for much larger future projects normally funded by Nasa, Du Pont, G E, Cal-Tech and MIT. They were fairly successful in raising some funds for the project, but nowhere near what DuPont and the other backers of the more famous projects, namely the one by Dr. Mac Cready, and several by MIT, and Cal-Tech. These were the big "players", and rightly so, as their talents, know- how and Aeronautical background , was at that time, unparalelled. Our project had a grand total of three Engineers, and a team of six design people, yours truly included, and five more men and one woman, experienced in fiberglass construction. Without being either in the Political, or Intellectual limelight, as the more famous teams were, it is of course difficult to raise the enormous funding from private industry needed for development of a research and development project of this type. Needless to say that our funding didn't even approach that of the three big teams. All in all, however, it was quite an experience, in that the engineering problems that arise, in an attempt to build a craft, with a total empty weight of 110 pounds or less, and to engineer and fabricate mechanical linkage of ultra-light materials, gearing, carbon shafting and propeller to develop .5 HP plus mechanical advantage from a light but leg-strong, enduring and conditioned athletic power source , are enormous to say the least. It was Dr. Paul Mac Cready, the eventual winner of several prizes, and qualifications a mile long, who brilliantly reasoned that the longer and lighter the wing-span, of an ultra-light, the less HP needed to pedal the mechanical linkage to get off the ground. He single handedly, created a need and opened doors for several Industries, created for the purpose of catering to the development of ultra-light materials, both metallic, and carbon-based. Many ultra- light industries exist today because of his efforts. Unfortunately, our project never quite got off the ground, both figuratively and literally, but the learning experience was imeasureable. An Owens-Corning Draftsman and myself were teamed up to design and develop light yet strong airfoils and wings with a total weight of

80 lbs. The wing span of our craft was to be 84 ft, which included a 2.7 ft spacer between each wing which were supports and mounts for the fuselage containing all the linkage, gearing and peddling mechanism, along with of course with the ergonomic saddle for a human weighing no more than 140 lbs, in top physical condition. If I can get my hands on some of our old drawings and prints, I would be happy to share some of them with you. It is a given that many aspects of the project remain proprietary, even now, and therefore not for public view. All the designing and drafting that was done at that time was before I was involved in computers, and all drafting was done with Engineering Instruments, on drawing boards. I didn't do any conversion to CAD until I started in computers in 1999, and at that time I converted most of the wing and airfoil designs, and some of the shaft, beveled gearing and prop designs into Autocad, and my intention is to eventually re-do most of it in Solidworks, or at least whatever parts of it that confidentiality will allow. Good luck in your search for data of this most exciting and fascinating subject.

G. De Angelis Valhalla Grafix LTD De Angelis Tool