Below: A simple bicycle
chain would be used on
our HPA, running up from
the rear wheel to turn the
propeller.

The solutions to those problems have been

pondered over for years by people far cleverer

than me, yet not all of them have managed to

get a man in the air, and even those who have

got their man off the ground haven’t always

managed to keep him there for very long! The

aircraft that they have built to make their flying

attempts in the past have often been weird

and wonderful machines, but nowadays they

all tend to have certain things in common.

The materials used and the way that they

are designed are often quite similar – after

all, the people who make them are trying to

achieve the same thing and have much the

same bank of knowledge to draw on. But even

if the machines do look a bit alike, there are

still small but important differences that stem

from the way the designers have approached

the problem of getting a man into the air and

what they hoped to achieve once they’d got him

airborne. Do they want him to fly fast or cover

a huge distance? If you think about it, there’s a

heck of a difference between a supersonic jet

fighter and a long-haul passenger jet.

One of the things that many of the successful

human-powered aircraft (HPAs) have in

common is that they are built in Britain. There’s

a long tradition of record-breaking HPAs in the

UK, and I had to look to some of these pioneers

to show me how it can be done and where my

biggest problems would lie.

In order to follow what they were telling me,

I had to swot up on a few basic principles of

flight and find out what keeps an aeroplane in

the air. An important factor in building bigger

and faster aircraft has been the development

of engines, but I wasn’t to have the luxury of

that sort of technology. I was going to have to

rely on my own muscle power, and that was

ultimately to test me more than any other

physical challenge I had ever faced.

78  HUMAN POWERED AIRCRAFT