Human-Power ‘Copter Damaged During Test

Rotor blades on the Da Vinci II, an experimental human-powered helicopter, were damaged beyond repair when it crashed during a test flight that Cal Poly San Luis Obispo aeronautical engineering students were conducting Saturday in a hangar in Long Beach.

It will take six to nine months to build a new craft so that the students can continue their pursuit of the American Helicopter Society’s $25,000 prize for the first successful flight of a human-powered helicopter.

“Students got in a dozen tests Saturday. They were pleased with each succeeding result until the second to the last test planned for the day,” Cal Poly spokesman Bob Anderson said.

“That test was extremely exciting. The Da Vinci II bounced up into the air about 6 inches off the ground but students were holding on to the pilot’s cage at the time to steady it and they pushed it back down. Video recording show the helicopter clearly off the ground for a brief moment,” Anderson said.

Another test was quickly attempted. This time the students kept their hands off the pilot’s cage. But the 165-pound helicopter failed to lift. Instead it pivoted over and crashed, damaging the rotor blades. No one was hurt.

To qualify for the prize, the craft must lift and hover at least 10 feet off the ground for 60 seconds without drifting more than 15 feet in any direction. And, no one other than the pedaling pilot can be touching the helicopter at the time.

Cal Poly students have spent the last seven years off and on in their spare time designing, building and testing a human-powered helicopter so far without achieving a successful lift-off. This was their second craft, named as was the first after Leonardo Da Vinci, who drew a human-powered helicopter in one of his sketch books 500 years ago.

The pilot pedals inside a triangular shaped cage at the center of two 3-foot-wide lightweight rotor blades with a total wing span of 140 feet. The pilot’s pedaling motion has the same effect as spinning a top, only he is spinning the rotor blades to produce liftoff.