The centuries-old dream of a human-powered ornithopter, such as the one sketched by Leonardo Da Vinci, has until recently been quite elusive. Early in August, an engineering student at the University of Toronto made history in his own creation. Todd Reichert, a Ph.D. student, and his team developed, built and tested the machine over the last 4 years.
The aircraft weighs in at only 95.9 lbs empty. It has a wingspan of 105 ft, similar to that of a 737, and is propelled by “flapping” the wings. The aircraft is not speedy, nor does it achieve much altitude, but it is a fully-qualified aircraft. On it’s ground-breaking flights, the aircraft achieved 19.3 seconds of sustained flight at an airspeed of almost 16 mph covering more than 475 feet.
The aircraft consists of carbon fiber, balsa wood, and foam and is a little funny looking, but it has flown at least twice. For more information on the project, see http://hpo.ornithopter.net/. There is a wealth of information including technical information on the aircraft and official records on the flights themselves. Additionally, there are a number of photos of the project on Flickr.
The following video of the flight was uploaded to Vimeo by the U of T Engineering department and it is worth a watch just to see the craft in action. I would like to see some in cockpit video, but from what I understand that might have put the aircraft over gross weight.
HPO Flight from U of T Engineering on Vimeo.