Ladies and gentlemen, an American biology student now holds the
record for the world’s longest human powered flight by a female. She’s
Judy Wexler and in the picture below she’s on Gamera, a carbon fiber
four rotor aircraft that’s on track to bag the Sikorsky
prize. It’s a holy grail of sorts among helicopter enthusiasts, its
criteria being an unattainable goal of 60 seconds of human powered
flight. Ms. Wexler has so far only managed less than a fifth of that
span with her machine, but she’s determined.
Funny name though. Apparently Gamera a Japanese monster from a kaiju film–a
monster movie. Operating the Gamera is no joke either. Its five pilots
need to exert a lot of foot and hand pedaling to power the rotor and
getting the frame off the gorund. Ms. Wexler and her team already
succeeded with a brief four second hover, they’ve just bested themselves
recently with an even longer limited flight.
Here’s the video:
If you ever cared about the future of flight in a fast paced and
complex world, then you’d better be rooting for this team. Godspeed to
them!
