The AM Forum

It's been a long time coming. While Arthur C. Clarke's satellites have taken to space, and James Bond's futuristic mobile technology has become common place, still the dream of sustained personal flight has eluded us. But the future is here! Finally we can all take flight as Martin Aircraft in New Zealand releases the first commercially-available jet pack.

1/2 hour flight time, up to 8,000' altitude, will carry a person up to 240 pounds,
runs on premium gasoline.

I want one!

(I wonder how many the Marines plan to buy?)

http://www.businessweek.com/lifestyle/content/jun2010/bw20100615_209271.htm?campaign_id=rss_topStories

http://www.martinjetpack.com/

Interesting.

Back in the 70's, a college friend rented a room from an retired Bell engineer and his wife while she was going to school at BU. She introduced me to them and I got to chat with him over  the course of several visits. He worked on the original Bell Rocket Belt and had lots of fun information about it.

The original rocket belt, as seen in the Bond movie, was a hydrogen peroxide rocket - H2O2 forced through a silver catalyst grid in the rocket throat by compressed air with a gimballed arrangement to vector the thrust as needed. The flight time was 60 seconds plus, with a 10 second warning beeper in an earpiece worn under the helmet. After 60 seconds, all bets were off...

The original mission was to allow troops to move from LSTs landing on the beach to safer environs without having to run through the killing zones established by the defenders on the beach - ala Normandy. Basically hop from the boat to behind the defender's lines in one bound. 

He said that all the 'test pilots' who did the testing and demos were recruited from the Buffalo University football squad, and that through the years of testing and demos, the worst injury anyone suffered was a fellow who was up on a raised platform 10 feet off the ground who was waving to the crowd before his flight and inadvertently backed up and stepped off the platform and fell.

He said they had developed a second version that used a mini Arvo turbojet in a similar fashion and could run on Kerosene for 30 minutes, but the noise from the mini jet engine was basically unbearable for the pilot and that kept it from being further developed. It was a much more compact package as he described it than the Martin system shown.

One system that has been around for a while, although it's not very good in winds, is the powered parasail. Basically a special version of a square parachute (almost an ellipse in shape) with a backpack motor of about 20 hp, these allow you to run and take off, cruise around at modest speeds, and then drop in wherever a parachute can land. A friend of mine had one and said it was pretty neat, as long as the air was calm.

Failure is not an option   :o


*I would want a default parachute deployment option at min. effective alt.

Very nice.

So much for its future! Can it run on wind power?

That is so dam cool... 

Let me guess,  six figure price tag?

Atleast they beat this guy: http://www.moller.com/

Theirs WORKS!

well that thing looks perfectly safe..

Adding to WB2EMS's post above....

I worked for IBM and spent a lot of time at Bell in Niagara Falls during the development of the jet pack. Bell put together some PR films to show off their toy.  I got to see the outtakes....

Flight training for the 'pilots' was done in one of their hangers with the pilot tethered on ropes to minimize the impact of a fall.  Didn't do much for the fellow that shot straight up to the roof however.

One series in the PR film was a sequence where the fellow was zig-zagging around trees in an apple orchard.  The shot of the guy flying right into a tree didn't make the final cut.

Another sequence had the fellow flying along a creek and dipping his toe into the water as he moved along. He dipped a bit too much toe and had a little spash.

Bell was a very interesting place.  The rocket belt, a lunar lander simulator, destructively testing helicopter blades, VTOL aircraft development with 4 big fan pods.  There was also a squadron of B-52s stationed at the Niagara Falls airbase across the way.  It's a wonder us IBM guys got any 'real' work done!

73, Bill  N2BC

A new way to do antenna work! No more tower climbing ;D

Hmmmm.........................

antenna deployment hmmmmm.  Here Hold on to this insulator and fly up to 300ft or so when i say go-------- And Don't touch the wire!!!!

Wayne
KB3RRX

Bill, it certainly looked that way to me. About 10 years after my visits with the engineer, I was involved in some environmental testing for some military antisub gear (LAMPS components) and we rented some of their facilities for shake and bake testing, specifically the vibration tables.

It took us 20 minutes to walk from the parking lot to the lab where we were situated, and only about 3 minutes of that was outside the building. The place was *enormous*. I remember watching the workers both roller skating and bicycling inside the huge building to get around, with big dish mirrors at the intersections to prevent collisions. When I worked in AF building 59 in Johnson city it was similar, although not nearly as large. We had people skating around with messages.

One section of the building we walked past was where they were assembling big hovercraft - 3 turbine engines each that I could see. That area had an open hangar door facing out towards the Niagara Falls runway across the way where the 52's used to be stationed. When we were there all they were flying was C-130's and helicopters. Still fun to watch, but nothing like watching a BUFF take off. Looked like it was setup so you could taxi right out of the Bell facility across the way to the runways.

As you mentioned, lots of history in that place. When we were in the environmental labs, they had dollys and carriers for Agena rockets sitting right there in the hallways, covered with dust. The P39 Aircobra and later P63 Kingcobras were built there, along with the Bell 47's of Mash fame. I think the P59 Aircoment, the first US jet was built there also, based off the 'cobra airframe.  The fellow we were working there with said parts of the Manhattan project were housed there also.

The whole place had an air of American "Can Do" about it, sadly overlaid with the dust of age.

I got a kick out of looking at the amps that drove the shaker tables. They would have made a kick butt modulator, or in some cases even a decent linear amp at HF.

It has one -- supposed to be good down to very low altitude

It's not a jet-pack... it's a fan based hovercraft... but ok... wonder if it has any gyro stabilization like the Segway personal two wheel vehicle?? Thinking about those pesky wind gusts... when ur tumbling out of control a 'chute isn't much help...

                 _-_-bear

I don't think you can class it as a hovercraft, don't those by definition 'fly' only in ground effect? The Martin gizmo looks like its designed for more than that. I agree that a chute isn't much good when you're tumbling unless you have enough room below you. A ballistically deployed chute should work pretty well down to a couple of hundred feet. Should - such a lovely word....

A quick look at their website revealed that the engine is a 4 cyl 2-cycle engine.

Hmmmm................... Mixing oil with the gas is not environmently friendly. the EPA will probably block its mass production as they are trying to phase out any and everything 2-cycle.  :'(  :'(

a two cycle with tuned exhaust.  VERY efficient power wise.

EPA - blah.

They can't do that, everything that flies is under the exclusive jurisdiction of the FAA. Light planes still use leaded gasoline and aircraft aren't subject to emissions testing, either.

Neither are lawnmowers and outdoor power equipment. But they (the EPA) have done a pretty good job of screwing them up. You can no longer get a new 2-stroke lawnmower, 2-stroke weed wackers are being phased out for 4-stroke models, and the last 2 remaining small engine manufacturers in this country threatened to close their doors forever when they wanted them to put catalytic converters on lawn mower engines!! Where does it end ???  ???

Sooner or later they WILL find some way to get their grubby mits into the aircraft industry. After all they are both branches of the federal guvmit. I can see it now, newer planes will have fuel fillers that will only take the unleaded pumps :o  ;D

As soon as I get one, I'll be stopping by your houses on a regular basis for coffee each morning! Keep an ear out for me, I'll make a few screaming low passes before landing!

Might be useful for quickly deploying antennas above the treetops!

a lot of fun, and just $90,000, for which you could by a very nice four seater (Cessna or Piper).

or a crappy two seater and have a LOT left over for gas...

Well, I'm a licensed pilot but no way could I pass even a 3rd class medical any more.

I was thinking of getting a Cessna 150 to fly under the new regs. That's what I learned to fly in. And an old Taylorcraft tail dragger. But the XYL has other ideas. If I had the 90 grand, I'd look into one of those back pack ducted rotorpacks. You'd think she'd be swayed by my life insurance policy...LOL

I have 1,200 feet to take off and land from in my field...Sheeit. Flying a plane never gets out of your system..

Here is where material science is heading also.  The Masten "Xombie" VTOL rocket.

Mid-air shut down and re-start.
 
http://tinyurl.com/2asou5l    ( Best in HD, full screen. )


*1 thrust diamond = 1 Mach in exhaust velocity  :o
  

Right, not "hovercraft" at all... it's called a... crud, CRS strikes again...

but it does use fans...

There was a shot in a National Geographic that caught my eye in a office I was at today... guy has 4 small jet engines on a wing, HE is strapped to the wing (rocket man position) in a space suit of sorts, and they say he flew across the English Channel with it!! Something about doing it in 8 mins flat!! WHOA!! (recent issue - the one with the Redwood trees on the cover)

Not sure what he did for landing with that setup... but it was legit.

                        _-_-bear

Maybe you're thinking of VTOL? (Vertical Take Off and Landing) It would qualify as one of those.


Bill, look into some of the better ultralights which have been converted to ELSAs. A lot more affordable than a used Cessna these days and some of them are quite capable craft. The two stroke engines are a bit different, but have good power to weight. My CGS Hawk Arrow II has the performance envelope of a hot Piper Cub. 900 fpm climb, 70 mph cruise at 4 gph, 20 mph crosswind component, and it can get in and out of 1200 feet with no problem. 


True dat!

CRS = Ducted Fan Propulsion?

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

My dad always used to say "Real planes drag their tail!"
Here he is circa 1976..

My military brother did jobs where he and 6-8 other guys would go into the desert for a week or more looking for stuff that needed to be destroyed.
To deploy the HF antenna, his operator would bungee the center insulator to a 24FT painters pole which ws then extended and held straight up by one or two soldiers (no joke) and then have a couple other soldiers take the ends of the dipole by the insulators and run out 30-50FT each way holding it at arm height. Each with a buddy toting the pair's M16's just in case. No one got tired.. the transmissions were very short.

Kevin -- The Hawk Arrow II is a nice bird. We had a guy at Turlock Airpark (9CL0) in CA when I was working there in the early '90s that had one. I worked on it a couple times. Taxi-tested it, but never got to fly it. :-(

John -- Great shot of your Dad. Love those radial engines. Greatest engine sound in the world. There was a duster with a R-1340 in his plane that used our strip (9CL0) quite a lot. He had finger pipes on the engine and I'd stand right by the edge of the runway on his takeoff roll just to 'feel' the sound of that big round engine. Best I ever heard was a low fly-by of three B-25s (2 X Wright R-2600 each) during an airshow at Rialto CA (L67). I'm going to the big CAF Airsho at Midland TX (MAF) this year. Been trying to get there for the last 13 years. This year is the winner. All those round-engined warbirds in one place. Radial engine heaven!

ldb
K5WLF

They fly really nice. Chuck did a great job with the control harmonization, and they have a big tail so lots of rudder authority.. Just really pleasant to fly and I love having a stick instead of a wheel. Very docile, no bad habits. Only downside is the light weight and wing loading. In bouncy air it's a rougher ride than something like a Cherokee. OTOH, you can throttle back to idle and soar. I've been in a thermal climbing 1000fpm with the engine at idle, flaps out and the nose pointed down.

John - that is a great pic. Looks like a Grumman Ag Cat. I too love the sound of those radial engines. Nothing like them. We used to have a duster at the strip I trained at that had two of them, one with a 2 bladed prop, and one with a 3 blade prop. On the two blade, when he wound it up for take off the tips would go supersonic and just create the most amazing ear splitting noise! Once he got up in ground effect, he'd back off a couple of hundred RPM to get them subsonic and I swear the noise level would drop 20-30 db, leaving nothing but that great radial roar. Now that's *power*.  ;D