AeroVelo Wins Human-Powered Helicopter Prize
A team from Toronto finally manages to keep a pedal-powered vehicle in the air for over a minute
It only took 33 years.
That’s how long the American Helicopter Society’s cash prize for a human-powered helicopter that could fly at 3 meters altitude for more than a minute went unclaimed. A couple of teams have come close to that mark in the past year, however, so it seemed just a matter of time.
On June 13, Todd Reichert of the Toronto-based AeroVelo team pedaled the Atlas vehicle on a record-setting flight lasting 64.1 seconds, reaching an altitude of 3.3 meters, and took home, at long last, the $250,000 Sikorsky prize. Read more about AeroVelo here.