For the first time ever an ornithopter driven by manpower managed a sutained leel flight of around 20 seconds (an ornithopter is an airplane that moves by flapping its wings) thus finally realizing something close to Daedalus´ and Leonardo DaVincis dream.
Up to now it was almost impossible to built a man muscle powered ornithopter because of the bad weight/power ratio.
Here the vid, amazing sight, and lots of high tech involved (the whole bird weighs only 42 kilos at that amazing size):
While it did not auto-start (this is still considered rather impossible) it flew level and held the height for 16 flaps and only descended when the pilot stopped flapping.
The bird was constructed by a group at the university of Toronto and had a wingspan of 32 metres made out of carbon fibre, balsa and foam. The pilot sits in a small cockpit suspended below the wings and pumps a bar with his feet to operate a system of wires that flap the wings up and down. The pilot steers using a pair of metal bars attached to rudders on the back of the aircraft. Towed by a car until airborne, it then sustained 19.3 seconds of flight, over a distance of 145 metres; an average speed of 15.91 miles per hour. Although similar tow-launched flights have been made in the past, improved data collection was used to verify that the ornithopter was capable of self-powered flight once aloft.
Here more on the project:
http://hpo.ornithopter.net/Rattler
