It’s Up, Up and Away-- If Only for Short Time : Inventive Student Minds, Strong Legs Combine in Unending Quest for Human-Powered Flight

It was about 2 a.m. Saturday when eight UC Irvine engineering students converged on a campus athletic field to assemble the human-powered airplane they worked all year to perfect.

By the light of fluorescent lamps powered through yards of orange extension cords, the students joined the tail boom to the fuselage, attached the propeller, assembled six wing sections and covered most of the aircraft with transparent Mylar.

Before daybreak, there it was: Pegasus, its 100-foot-long single wing suspended like a giant white ruler against a backdrop of trees. And despite a soggy morning and a series of mechanical failures, the ungainly aircraft powered by a fast-pedaling cyclist actually got off the ground.

“You hear the wheels on the ground and then all of a sudden there’s nothing between you and the ground,” said team member Jeanne Pandes, 22, who piloted the plane on its first short flights. “You’re cruising.”

Pegasus is the third and most successful attempt by UC Irvine mechanical engineering students to construct a human-powered airplane as a senior project. The 1987 airplane, dubbed the UC Medfly, crashed almost immediately after leaving the ground. Last year’s plane, UC-ME-FLY (“you see me fly”), succeeded in making flights of close to 300 feet.

The Pegasus team used wing sections from UC-ME-FLY, but built a new, more aerodynamic fuselage that reduced the airplane’s weight from 135 pounds to 120 pounds, said project leader Greg Hill, 23.

The 35-foot-long aircraft is made of balsa wood, sturdy carbon fiber tubing and transparent Mylar, a plastic coating.

Pegasus is one of eight senior projects in the mechanical engineering department, whose students also designed a human-powered car and a human-powered hydrofoil, both of which are scheduled to make their debut Monday morning in Newport Beach.

About 7 a.m. Saturday, the weather was a major source of anxiety for the Pegasus team. An infrequent drizzle covered the wings with a film of water, which one student patiently scraped off with a yellow squeegee. Because of the wing’s large surface area, Hill estimated that the drizzle added about 10 pounds to the airplane’s weight.

Once the wires and propeller had been checked, the students pushed Pegasus across the soggy sod to the end of the field.

Wearing black tights, white tennis shoes and a Pegasus T-shirt, Pandes crawled into the triangular cockpit and experimented with the pedals. The covered cockpit bore the advertising logos of the dozen companies that donated about $8,000 to build Pegasus.

The team positioned itself for the takeoff, one student holding up the end of each wing and several more supporting the fuselage and tail. Pandes began pedaling and Pegasus quivered unsteadily from nose to tail.

“Let’s go, Jeanne,” one student urged the pilot.

The aircraft lifted off the ground, traveling perhaps 15 feet, then one of the wires holding the wings to the fuselage snapped. The students repaired the wire and tried again. Pandes piloted the airplane for four more flights, the longest of which was about 40 feet.

Though the 110-pound Pandes had the advantage of being lightweight, Pegasus needed more power. So the second pilot, amateur cyclist Arcadio Biboso, was called in.

Clad in yellow-and-black Spandex, Biboso’s powerful legs lifted Pegasus on a 60-foot flight. But he reported a problem with the pedaling mechanism--the chain linking the pedals to the propeller shaft kept jerking, causing the airplane to lose momentum.

“You can’t really control it,” Biboso said. “I’m not really getting a steady rhythm.”

The team discussed ways to correct the problem and, in a last-ditch effort, attached a chain-tightening device with quick-drying epoxy glue and some string.

A few minutes later, with Biboso at the controls, Pegasus made its longest flight ever: nearly 300 feet. The next attempt was even more successful, with the airplane staying aloft for more than 300 feet.

But as Pegasus was landing, the right wing hit the ground and snapped in the middle.

“Where’s the epoxy?” called one student.

In a post-mortem of Pegasus’ flight, Hill mourned that, “These wings are so long, so fragile . . . but that the plane has stayed together through all these rough landings says something for us, I guess.”