Man flies like a bird - a jet-powered bird!

Man has been attempting to fly for around 2400 years yet has only begun to master the process in the last century. In the history of flight, 2004 is shaping as a good year. One of the pioneers of human flight, Yves Rossy, recently achieved a landmark which went largely unheralded. Rossy’s feats might well go down among the most daring as well as momentous in aviation history.

Rossy made headlines in 2003 when he flew 12 kilometres for the loss of just 3000 metres of altitude, achieving his feat by jumping out of plane wearing three metre, carbon fibre wings.

The former military pilot, 45, who flies Airbuses for Swissair, spent five years developing his wings for his flying man project but went one better with his 'jet-man' project by adding two kerosene-powered jet engines to his original wing design to become the first man to fly like a bird: horizontally.

At 7:30pm on June 24, 2004 Rossy dropped from 4000m over the Yverdon airfield. After opening the wings, he glided to 2500m, ignited the engines and waited 30 seconds for them to be able to stabilize and begins to open the throttle. At 16m, he achieved horizontal flight for more than 4 minutes at 100 knots (115 mph).

"It was absolutely fantastic; freedom in three dimensions...I felt like a bird." That's how Rossy described his land-mark flight. Looking like Buzz Lightyear from the film Toy Story as he soared over the Alps at 180km/h. To perfect the performance, the aerodynamic wings were improved and their span was increased to 3 meters.

Because there was a loss of rigidity due to the inflatable side of the wings, Yves had to stop his collaboration with "Prospective Concepts", who made the original design, and work only with "ACT Composites" who then created foldable carbon wings, able to be used from a Pilatus Porter plane.

Handles were also fixed onto the wings so that Yves could electronically manipulate the wingtips, this giving him the freedom to decide when he wanted to either glide or dive.

These new wings were tested quite a few times with different weights on them so as to see how and where the kerosene port and engines would be placed.

...continued