Attempt at Human Flight

Insect Flight - insight

2010-01-05T10:17:00.000-08:00

This article gives good information about the insect flight:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insect_flight

Understand that basically there are 2 types of insect flights:
a) Direct
b) Indirect

Dragon flies are from very long time ago.. probably longer than dinosaurs.

Reynolds number (Re) - need to look further into this.
Re ranges from 10 (low turbulance - small insects) to 10000 (high turbulance - large insects)

Insects range from .02g to 3g (grams)
mass is directly poportional to wing area
mass is inversly proportinal to beat frequency

needs more reading....

Insect Flight

2010-01-05T09:21:00.000-08:00

As everyone says birds body is well suited for flying and human body is not suitable, it made me think that it would be difficult to attempt at human flight. However, reading more about insect flight has given me more confidence that a human flight is possible and answer lies in understanding or replicating the flying techiniques of an insect.
Like human body, the insect's body is also not suited for flight. Also, if one looks closely the wings are also in proportion with their body length. Also, the wing loading much higher in comparision to a bird, which means that smaller wings would suffice. This gives me more confidence that if an attempt is made then for sure at some point the human flight is possible. Even though that though might look like a distant dream, I am condifent that humans have advanced leaps and bounds in technology. Only an integrated effort is needed to put all the things in place.
However, as I am reading more about insect's flight i am realing that humans have not yet fully understood the insect's flight. There needs to be a proper research done in this area.

Slow Motion Pigeon Flight

2010-01-02T23:32:00.001-08:00

This picture shows the slow motion flight of a pigeon taken from my house.
It includes, take off, vertical flight and landing

full screen video can be watched at

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j2EUmOASOLs

calculation method for amount of thrust required

2009-12-31T13:13:00.001-08:00

calculation method for amount of thrust required during flight

example used is Archaeopteryx

http://www.stephenjaygould.org/ctrl/news/file013.html

Birds are the perfect flying machines - key points

2009-12-30T10:43:00.000-08:00

sites to read:

more understanding of bird flight

http://wings.avkids.com/Book/Animals/intermediate/birds-01.html

1) Talks about feathers how they are made up. Understood that there is lot of air in between the feathers

2) ears of the birds are critical for their balance during flight?

3) birds generate energy faster than human beings - humming birds burn 50 times more than human

4) The lift generated is proportional to square of the speed of the bird.

As bird triples it speed lift generated increases 9 times!

5) Bird thrusts forward by flapping their wings

6) Move your arms fast & then twist them

7) Birds can glide -

use energy from thermal currents - light weight air rises & birds use these currents to fly with minimum energy. That is why some birds wait till late morning to start flying. So, that the sun heats the earth and the hot air rises.

Some birds use the wind risen from obstruction like mountains or high rise buildings

8) Birds are perfect flying machines - humans are not.

lets look at some more living beings who fly but are not areodynamically perfect like birds..

http://wings.avkids.com/Book/Nature/advanced/index.html

Leg Thrust Important

2009-12-30T10:31:00.000-08:00

This paper talks about importance in leg thrust during a birds take off.

http://jeb.biologists.org/cgi/reprint/114/1/285.pdf

A very nice paper, provided good information like bird generates force nearly 1.6 times of its body weight.

Also, it introduced me to concept of clap-and- fling.

Other things like bird of a pigeon is around 300 gms was one I was looking for.

Fight of a Bird

2009-12-29T10:09:00.001-08:00

A very neat explanation of how birds fly and different types of wings

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bird_flight

So from this article I understood what is required to fly.

Also, it is seen that different types of birds have different wing shapes, heavy birds (like eagle) might have short wing size for easy take off.

One conclusion that I can draw from this article is that no matter the weight, one can fly given type of wing and more important amount of energy expended during flight.

Aeroplane Working

2009-12-27T11:10:00.001-08:00

Neat explanation of how fight works...

http://www.allstar.fiu.edu/aerojava/airflylvl3.htm

This site gives a good explanation one principles of flight.

Ultimate Human Flight

2009-12-27T10:38:00.000-08:00

I have a dream to Fly. This has been in my heart for long long time now. Ultimately I decided to make some progress towards it.

This dream is fueled by a strong feeling that a human flight is possible. It is not that I don't understand that many people have tried and obtained only limited success. However, I feel that some day it will happen.

Idea is to have simple wings which a human should be able to use to travel using the 3rd dimension - fly rather than walk. Just imagine what power humans will get by being able to fly!

I have read many reasons why we human bodies are not suited for flying, however, this attempt will have to be beyond those limitations of course.

Human Powered Flights

2009-12-27T10:14:00.000-08:00

Following site provides details of human powered flights:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man-powered_flight

Details include, who made the longest sustained flights etc.

I was amazed to know that the longest flight was 115kM...ooff,,,, too long. (Daedalus 88)

However, what amazed me further was that this record was set in 1988!!

It has been more than twenty one years since that record has been broken! (today 27th Dec 2009)

source:

http://records.fai.org/manpowered/history.asp?id1=178&id2=1&id3=12