Project: Geoff Hanbury
In 2002, Geoff Hanbury announced a project to construct a human powered
helicopter and solicited contributions. The announcement appeared in internet
newsgroups, on a website and in 2 australian club newsletters. The project
mailing address is in Australia. The project webpage's text has been replaced
with "Too late. Offer expired." since about May 2003. This gives the
impression that the project was inactive as of Jan. 2007. Or, the project may
have switched to the construction phase.
Below, from the old website:
We are constructing what will be the worlds first successful fully functional Human Powered Helicopter.
After a long history of attempts and failures, human powered aircraft became a reality when in 1977 the Gossamer Condor won the Kramer Prize for flying a figure 8 circuit, and evolved to aircraft that can be flown for over 3 hours at a time.
Problem is that these aircraft are extremely fragile and too expensive for ordinary people to buy.
There have been many attempts to construct a human powered helicopter for more than a century, one or two have just managed to get off the ground, but none have been truly successful. If you search the Internet you will even find a few current attempts. There is a lot of data out there on past attempts, as well as some technical critiques.
This aircraft is extremely different to ALL previous attempts. It is difficult to convince you, without disclosing features, but this design will succeed and is a serious contender for the American Helicopter Society?s Ivor Sikorsky human powered helicopter competition and will get into the history books.
This project will not only produce the first successful human powered helicopter, but also provide design criteria for a new breed of human powered aircraft with the following attributes;
* Designed for average people, so you don?t need to be an Olympic athlete to use it.
* Flown by average people for more than a half hour at a time.
* Simple, natural controls so can be flown by nearly anybody.
* Ergonomically pleasing.
* Light enough to be easily carried by one person.
* As small as practicable for flying in reasonable breeze. (Smaller size also means faster flying speeds)
* Aircraft derived from this project will be durable and relatively inexpensive.
To help with costs we are selling portions of the visual surface of the aircraft, like a billboard, for people to leave their mark on history for all the world to see, when flown and later when its on display.
All you have to do is send your contribution and enclose your graphic i.e. one of an autograph or photo, message, advertisement, logo etc on a plain white piece of paper.
Except for anything obscene, your graphic will be reproduced exactly on the surface of this helicopter in equal proportion to other contributors, but larger contributions will be proportionally larger, equal to the contribution.
Any graphic deemed obscene and unsuitable for public display will be penalized by rendering it extremely small, regardless of contribution size.
All graphics on the aircraft will be permanent. No physical portion of this aircraft is offered for sale, only the visual surface of this historic aircraft is being sold. Just like selling billboard space.
Even a small contribution is greatly appreciated.
If you are sceptical of our success, dare to contribute then wait for it. We will achieve the first successful human powered helicopter flight.
If you would like to see fun aircraft like this eventually become available to everyone please contribute. Please spread the word. Every bit counts.
PO Box 702 ? Salisbury - South Australia ? 5108 - EMAIL cocky2@ihug.com.au
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