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Jet-Man

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Jman

Site Developer
Joined
Oct 22, 2002
Messages
1,881
Location
Pacific NW, USA!
Story from: http://www.yves-rossy.com/en/jetman.php

Following the “Flying Man” project, the logical “next step” was to accomplish the secret dream of being able to fly like Superman or the Rocketeer. To do this, motorizing the wings was to be achieved in order to be able to let the first flying man ever to fly horizontal level !

Yves had already contacted in 2002 the worlds leading model jet engine Company, “Jet-Cat”, based in Germany . This company specialized in motorizing miniature planes, quickly showed its interest to help Yves install engines onto his wings. Many tests were made with different engines, different air intakes, and they even had to test at altitudes reaching 4000 m as these particular engines had never been tested before at such an altitude. A test team was taken up in a Pilatus Porter so that fine-tuning could be made until the engines worked perfectly at high altitude.

To perfect the performance, the aerodynamic wings were improved and their span was increased to 3 meters . As of 2004 and because there was a loss of rigidity due to the inflatable side of the wings, Yves had to stop his collaboration with “Prospective Concepts” and work only with “ACT Composites” who then created foldable carbon wings, able to be used from a Pilatus Porter plane.

Handles were also fixed onto the wings so that Yves could electronically manipulate the wingtips, this giving him the freedom to decide when he wanted to either glide or dive. These new wings were tested quite a few times with different weights on them so as to see how and where the kerosene port and engines would be placed. Many simulations were tested before being able to fix on the real engines and most importantly before being ignited.

Once all ignition tests had been done at ground level, the real thing was ready to be done, but like all prototype experiments, you're lucky if the first trial is a success. Anything is possible here, ignition failure, ignition of only one engine, flight instability and even spinning is possible, but all of these failure tests were made during the long testing sessions.

Finally, at 7:30pm on June 24 th , 2004 and after the 3 rd trial of the day (6 th motorized trial), Yves finally drops out of the Pilatus at an altitude of 4000m over the Yverdon airfield. Before pulling on the little lever that controls the opening of his wings, Yves lets himself glide for a couple seconds and at the altitude of 2500m, he starts the ignition of the engines and waits 30 seconds for them to be able to stabilize. Once they are steady, he can finally speed up the engines and suddenly the dream comes true… He manages a horizontal flight at 1600m from the ground for more than 4 minutes at 100 kts ( 115 mph ), and for a bit of fun, manages to also ignite the smoke producers which leave a nice trail behind him..

Unfortunately Yves runs into some strong turbulence, and had to cut off the two engines, despite he still had half full tanks at this time, but the most important was achieved, the Jetman flew ! Yves triggers the parachute opening while closing the wings to finally land on the ground, greeted by the ecstatic team.

As soon as a patent was issued, more than 15 flights were done so as to perfect the “Jet-Man”, making it a reliable system. Filming of the Jet-Man was also made so as to show the world this incredible invention.
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