Building a

Record Breaker

The SUHPA (Southampton University

Human Powered Aircraft) team had come up

with a design that looked simple and elegant,

although that doesn’t do justice to the

ingenuity that went into creating it.

HE   whole thing was based around

a carbon-fibre racing bike that was

completely enclosed inside a cockpit

capsule coated with transparent film. The

cockpit was a framework of lightweight foam

T

– a bit like the kind of rigid foam that is used

in packaging to protect electrical goods – that

then had a sort of clingfilm stretched over it

to seal the pilot inside a streamlined hull.

Above the pilot’s fairing was a wing 20 metres

(66 feet) across made from sections of rigid

foam, and a black tail boom that reached

back to a tail section that had the horizontal

and vertical surfaces you would expect to

see on a normal aircraft except that these

too were made of rigid foam covered with

transparent film.

Rotating around the tail boom just behind the

cockpit was a large propeller with two blades,

each about 1.5 metres (5 feet) long. Driven by

a chain system from the rear wheel of the bike,

Top: The bicycle chains

showing the gears for

driving the bike forwards

and the big gear with the

chain running up to the

propeller shaft.

Bottom: To avoid using

an energy-sapping gear

system, the prop-shaft

chain was guided round

in a ‘twist’ to turn the cog

on the shaft.

104  HUMAN POWERED AIRCRAFT