About Bird-man and Jetengines First of all we are just ordinary skydivers and we do not have any specific skills or training for doing this. We do this just for fun. We love skydiving and we want to do it more. So we started to search for powerplants to get more airtime. Propeller is most efficient but pretty hard to combine. It would be cool to have propeller helmet though. Peroxide rockets were tested because of economical price, poweroutput and lightweight and -size.(www.peroxidepropulsion.com) Power output is great but fuel economy is really bad for slow moving objects. We had great fun to make own rockets and ground testing them. Before air testing we left them behind because of the fuel economy. Meanwhile we got the opportunity to go windtunnel to Finnish university. Lucky that they had ready made testbench for testing skijumpers. The estimate was that 95 kg jumper (my exit weight) needs 24 kg thrust to maintane flight level. Bad news were that it was physically really hard to "fly" there. We were really worried about this. Then we found suppier for jet engines(www.artesjet.com) Power supply is 16 kg thrust so we needed to have two. For two engines total fuel consumption is approx 1liter/min.full power "Design": We havent really designed anything but just done. couple of things we are not willing to compromise 1) The flyer has to be flexible and able to use his whole body as a plane. 2) Construction has to look more like flying man than ultralight airplane So we have rocket boots. As a boot we are using ice skating boot. This works pretty well, you can actually point the thrust. This feature is used by most sophisticated jetplanes only. Most of the other stuff is fitted (batteries , fuel pumps, fuel solenid, gas solenoid, filters and computer unit ) on the boot also. The system weight is 3.5 kilos/rocket boot total. (Engine weight is approx.1.5kg) Only gas tanks, fuel and controlls remains with the suit. We are using hot water bottles as a gastank. This way you have totally closed system which drains till last drop and works all positions. The bad thing is that the material does not like kerosine and goes hard in couple of days.Starting gas is needed also. Propane is better because of high altitude and coldness. Controlls are my left hand and i am able to adjust power easily. On the right hand i have safety swich. It stops the engines as soon i let the handle off. Now we have had first air tests.Power estimate is about right, it is easy to control and physically it is as normal bird-man flying. We did not have any flight recorders with but will have at next test. We continue testing and developing even finnish weather conditions are pretty extreme at the moment Our target at the moment is to have longer flights (+5 min), maintane flight level for whole flight and have fun and better video material. to those who have daughts about this i would like to say that 10 years ago this kind of engines were deep dream. Who knows what kind of powerplants we have after 5 years from now on. Blue skies Visa Ps. The suit is Stock Bird-man S-3 but i have tested different designs to get more lift BECAUSE I AM FAT ( yes i am on diet firs time in my life)
