The Queen Bee Human Powered Aircraft

03/08/2015

Mike Trueloves' first attempt at a triangle task at the Icarus Cup 2015. Aircraft is 'Aerocycle', a Human Powered Aircraft designed and built by John Edgley ...

02/08/2015

Aerocycle 3 flying 1 Kilometre at the BHPFC competition at Lasham on 30th July 2015. Pilot was Mike Truelove.

02/08/2015

We are back from the BHPFC competition at Lasham and unfortunately we could not fly because our propeller broke during the flight test. We also noted a couple of other small issues and we will prepare a draft report to show our findings and necessary recommendations to the future team who will carry on with the project.

Note: The propeller broke when we increased the rpm to almost full power on a windy day. This greatly increased the lift on the propeller, unfortunately due to the higher bending moment both blades snapped at the same time. We wish we had the video for that test to show you. The reason the blades snapped is because we did not have enough longitudinal strength in our propeller to take the full bending moment at high power and with a headwind. Future versions of the propeller should have extra carbon fibre pultrusion or tow along the length of the propeller or alternativly a spar along the whole length of the propeller. The root of the propeller could also be made thicker as this is where the maximum bending moment occurs.

01/08/2015

Betterfly taking off from grass this morning

28/07/2015

Airglow HPA during the competition...

28/07/2015

"Betterfly" HPA doing a flight test

27/07/2015

27/07/2015

Getting our plane ready to hopefully fly on Wednesday. The weather is not too favorable at the moment

26/07/2015

Some pictures of yesterday's evening flight and today's morning flight. Videos will be uploaded soon

25/07/2015

So far at Lasham

24/07/2015

Fuselage and propeller loaded up and ready to go to the competition!