People

Dr William Patterson

Dr Patterson was the supervisor of the Da Vinci III project. As of June 2006, he is a Professor at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo. In particular, he teaches a course called "Single Track Vehicle Design". Its objective is to promote the advancement of human powered vehicles by "learning by doing". For more information about him and his course, see his personal page. This page also includes his email address where you may be able to reach him and ask him questions.

• Patterson, William B. ."A Very Brief Overview of the First Human Powered Hover", Vertiflite March/April 1990.
• Patterson, William B. ."Design Process of a Human Powered Helicopter"
• Totah, Joseph J., Patterson, William. "Control of a Human-Powered Helicoper in Hover", NASA Tech Memo 101029, 1988.

Dr Akira Naito (内藤晃氏) and the NASG

Dr Akira Naito is one of the most famous men in the history of human powered flight along with Dr Paul MacCready. He died recently after retiring (1991) from Nihon University. If someone has a biography or a eulogy for Dr Naito, please email it to me. I bet there are some out there written in Japanese.

Photo by Chris Roper, from here.

Dr Paul MacCready

Dr Paul MacCready was the main designer and project leader for some of the most important human powered fixed-wing aircraft in history. He founded the company Aerovironment that went on to build and fly very light and very large aircraft capable of reaching extremely high altitudes with little power such as that provided by solar panels. His experience in designing human powered aircraft no doubt helped him. The Gossamer Condor is now at the Smithsonian Museum.

Books and Movies about Dr MacCready's Human Powered projects

• "The First Human Powered Flight: The Story of Paul B. MacCready and his Airplane, the Gossamer Condor", by Richard L. Taylor, 1995.
• "More with Less - Paul MacCready and the dream of efficient flight" by Paul Ciotti
• "Gossamer Condor"
• "Gossamer Condor and Albatross - A Case Study in Aircraft Design", by James D. Burke, 1980
• "The Flight of the Gossamer Condor" (Documentary movie available on VHS) by Ben Shedd, Jacqueline Phillips Shedd, Paul MacCready, and Roger Steffens, 1977
• "Gossamer Condor Plans", by Paul MacCready. Plans for the Gossamer Condor were made available. I think Mr MacCready used to sell them himself. I know they can be purchased second hand on the internet.
• "Gossamer Albatross" (Documentary movie available on VHS)
• Wikipedia: Paul MacCready
• Biography at MIT. Includes a video of the Gossamer Condor and Albatross.

As part of the "Scientific American Frontiers" webpages on the PBS website, Dr MacCready answered questions from the public. One of these was about human powered helicopters. Quote from the website: "Michael Gibbs asked: Greetings to another Caltech grad. I also have a degree in Physics from there. My question is: What is the latest progress on the attempt to make a human powered helicopter? I think a scaled down version might be a good candidate for a vehicle that can hover and carry a small camera. What do you think? McCready's response: The reality of a human-powered helicopter is that, with the simple formula for static thrust of a rotor, you quickly find you need a disk diameter of 150 feet or so for serious human-powered helicopter flight. It can be done, but the task is huge, and the dollar prize not worth the time expenditure. There are many more exciting, never-been-done-before challenges that can be accomplished with much less work."

Scott Larwood

 
Co-designer of the Da Vinci III. Currently (2007) a PhD candidate at UC Davis. Scott Larwood was very generous to give us this interview.

"You may lose money by building a craft that wins the formidable Sikorsky prize; however, you may end up being responsible for creating one of the most elegant and graceful machines known to humankind.  Thankfully, some people have already paved the way by getting off the ground." - Scott Larwood, 9 March 2007.

• Larwood, Scott; Saiki, Neal; "Aerodynamic Design of the Cal Poly Da Vinci Human-Powered Helicopter", American Helicopter Society, Vertical-Lift Aircraft Design Conference, San Francisco, CA, Jan 1990.