Early attempts at human-powered flight were unsuccessful because of the difficulty of achieving the high
power-to-weight ratio. Prototypes often used
ornithopter principles which were not only too heavy to meet this requirement but aerodynamically unsatisfactory.
First attempts In 1904, Scientific American published an article and a photograph of a bicycle plane built by Steward Winslow of
Riparia,
Washington. He attempted to fly his plane on 30 July 1904, but one of the wheels failed. An early human-powered aircraft was the
Gerhardt Cycleplane, developed by W. Frederick Gerhardt at
McCook Field in
Dayton, Ohio in 1923. Its only human-powered takeoff was a short hop of with the craft rising . 's Human-Power Aircraft, Berlin 1934 In 1934,
Engelbert Zaschka from Germany completed a large human-powered aircraft, the
Zaschka Human-Power Aircraft. On 11 July 1934, the Zaschka-HPA flew about on the
Berlin Tempelhof Airport; the HPA took off without
assisted takeoff. A craft called ''
(Muskelkraft-Flugzeug'') built by Helmut Hässler and first flew on 30 August 1935: a distance of at
Halle an der Saale. A total of 120 flights were made, the longest being in 1937. However, it was launched using a
tensioned cable and so was not strictly human-powered. In March 1937, a team of
Enea Bossi (designer), Vittorio Bonomi (builder), and Emilio Casco (pilot) met a challenge by the
Italian government for a flight of using their
Pedaliante. The aircraft apparently flew short distances fully under human power, but the distances were not significant enough to win the competition's prize. Furthermore, there has been much dispute whether it ever took off under the pedal-power of the pilot alone, in particular because there is no record of official observation of it having done so. Some arguments for and against the validity of Bossi's claim to have done so are presented by
Keith Sherwin (1976). At the time the fully human-powered flights were deemed to be a result of the pilot's significant strength and endurance; and ultimately not attainable by a typical human. As with the
HV-1 Mufli, additional attempts were therefore made using a catapult system. By being catapulted to a height of , the aircraft met the distance requirement of one kilometre but was declined the prize due to the launch method.
First flights The first officially authenticated take-off and landing of a human-powered aircraft (one capable of powered take-offs, unlike a
glider) was made on 9 November 1961 by
Derek Piggott in
Southampton University's Man Powered Aircraft (
SUMPAC) at
Lasham Airfield. The best flight out of 40 attempts was . The SUMPAC was substantially rebuilt by
Imperial College with a new transmission system but was damaged beyond repair in November 1965. The
Hatfield Puffin first flew on 16 November 1961, one week after SUMPAC. The Hatfield Man Powered Aircraft Club was formed of employees of
de Havilland Aircraft Company and had access to company support. Eventually its best distance was .
John Wimpenny said he was very pleased with the performance of the Puffin, which handled beautifully during the flight. His record stood for 10 years. Puffin 2 was a new fuselage and wing around the transmission recovered from the original Puffin. It flew on 27 August 1965 and made several flights over , including a climb to . After Puffin 2 was damaged, it was handed over to Liverpool University who used it to build the
Liverpuffin. After this date several less successful aircraft flew, until 1972 when the Woodford Essex Aircraft Group's
Jupiter, designed and built by Chris Roper, piloted by John Potter flew and in June 1972. Due to Roper's ill health, the project was later continued at
RAF Halton – Potter was a serving
Royal Air Force (RAF) officer at the time.
Royal Aeronautical Society Human Powered Flight Group The
Royal Aeronautical Society's "Man Powered Aircraft Group" was formed in 1959 by the members of the Man Powered Group of the
College of Aeronautics at
Cranfield when they were invited to join the Society. (Its title was changed from "Man" to "Human" in 1988 because of the many successful flights made by female pilots.) Under the auspices of the Society, in 1959 the industrialist
Henry Kremer offered the first
Kremer Prizes of £5,000 for the first human-powered aircraft to fly a figure-of-eight course round two markers half-a-mile apart. It was conditional that the designer, entrant pilot, place of construction and flight must all be British.
Kremer Prize successes In 1973, Kremer increased his prize money tenfold to £50,000. At that time, the human-powered aircraft had flown only in straight (or nearly straight) line courses, and no-one had yet even attempted his more challenging figure-eight course, which required a fully controllable aircraft. He also opened the competition to all nationalities; previously it was restricted to British entries only. On 23 August 1977, the
Gossamer Condor 2 flew the first figure-eight, a distance of 2.172 km winning the first Kremer prize. It was built by
Dr Paul B. MacCready and piloted by amateur cyclist and hang-glider pilot
Bryan Allen. Although slow, cruising at only , it achieved that speed with only . The second Kremer prize of £100,000 was won on June 12, 1979, again by Paul MacCready, when
Bryan Allen flew MacCready's
Gossamer Albatross from
England to
France: a straight distance of in 2 hours, 49 minutes.
Kremer speed prize and later flights by MIT team A week after the cross-channel flight of Gossamer Albatross, which used a propeller designed by the MIT team, a student-led team at the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology achieved first flight on their
Chrysalis aircraft, which demonstrated full controllability and was flown by 44 different pilots, craft on a triangular course in under three minutes (for an average speed of ): pilot Frank Scarabino. Further prizes of £5,000 are awarded to each subsequent entrant improving the speed by at least five percent. Over the next four years, the MIT group continued to develop their designs, with the Monarch and Monarch-B aircraft succeeded by three follow-on designs, the Light Eagle and two
MIT Daedalus aircraft, the Daedalus-87 and Daedalus-88. The current distance record recognised by the
FAI was achieved on 23 April 1988 from
Iraklion on
Crete to
Santorini in the
MIT Daedalus 88 piloted by
Kanellos Kanellopoulos: a straight distance of .
Passenger aircraft The first human-powered passenger flight occurred on 1 October 1984 when Holger Rochelt carried his sister Katrin in
Musculair 1.
Recent activities Machines have been built and flown in Japan, Germany, Greece, France, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Austria, Canada, Singapore, the United States, and the United Kingdom, with their total number approaching a hundred. With further funds from the late Henry Kremer, the
Royal Aeronautical Society announced four new prizes: • £50,000 for the Kremer International Marathon Competition for a flight round a specified twenty six mile (
marathon) distance course, in a time of under one hour; • £100,000 for the Kremer International Sporting Aircraft Competition for a sporting aeroplane able to operate in normal weather conditions, as encountered in the United Kingdom; • £1,000 for the Schools Competition; • £500 for The Robert Graham Competition for students for experimental research or engineering design. Attempts have been made to claim the £100,000 Kremer Sport prize. Students from
Virginia Polytechnic Institute designed an aircraft as part of their AE4065/6 class. A team from the
Pennsylvania State University designed the
PSU Zephyrus. A team of aerospace engineering students from the
University of Southampton designed and constructed the SUHPA. In 2012, the
Royal Aeronautical Society brought into being the
Icarus Cup for human powered flying. The first cup was won by
Airglow, designed by John and Mark McIntyre. The Icarus Cup is different from the Kremer Prize in that it does not aim to simply break speed and distance records, but make human powered flying into a popular sport. Therefore, the competition includes challenges such as a slalom course, an unaided starting task and a landing accuracy test. The Icarus Cup is held annually at
Lasham Airfield, Great Britain, the site of the first human-powered flight. In 2017, Yuta Watanabe, the pilot of Birdman House Iga, completed a round-trip flight. In 2019 he succeeded with a flight during the Japan International Birdman event above
Lake Biwa. == Types ==