The Pedal Pushers

The snubby nose of the broad-winged aircraft looked as if it had been flattened against the white cliffs of Dover. The propeller sprouted out of its tail like a designer's afterthought. In the cabin, the pilot rode a first cousin to a bicycle, and he was pedaling furiously. A covey of anxious friends checked his progress.

The strange craft lurched down the runway at De Havilland's Airfield in Hatfield, England, until it reached almost 20 m.p.h. Then the pilot pulled back on his handlebar control, and the plane glided all of 8 ft. into the air. Sweating profusely, 39-year-old John Wimpenny quit pedaling, and Puffin--so named because of all the puffing it took to get it in the air--wafted back to earth.

Thin Skin. Last week not only Puffin's puffers, but two other teams of British aeronauts as well, were attempting to accomplish what Leonardo da Vinci had failed to do nearly 450 years ago: build and fly an aircraft powered only by man. The payoff is tempting: a $14,000 prize donated by London Industrialist Henry Kremer, 55. The rules of the contest are deceptively simple. All a citizen of the Commonwealth has to do is fly a heavier-than-air craft over a figure-eight course, around two turning points not less than half a mile apart. According to requirements spelled out by the Royal Aeronautical Society, the plane must be launched from ground level; it must be powered and controlled by the crew over the entire flight in a wind less than 10 knots. No energy-storing devices such as rubber bands or batteries may be used. But the altitude need not be high--only 10 ft. at start and finish.

Wimpenny, a De Havilland aerodynamicist, has been experimenting with man-powered flight ever since the '40s. Two years ago, after Kremer offered his prize money, Wimpenny organized the Hatfield Man Powered Aircraft Club and designed Puffin. Spars were made from spruce. The plane's framework was covered with a plastic film one three-thousandth of an inch thick. As it took shape in a hangar, Puffin's fuselage grew to 20 ft., its wings spread out for 84 ft. Practicing in the cockpit, Wimpenny took the classic pose of a racing cyclist--body bent forward, hands on a low-mounted handle bar.

In Puffin's maiden flight last fall, Wimpenny's legs churned bicycle pedals that turned both the main landing-gear wheel and the gft. propeller attached to the plane's tail. Puffin stayed aloft for less than a minute. Not until spring did Wimpenny manage a 993-yd. flight, and even then his aircraft could not make the required figure-eight turns. Said Wimpenny last week as he waited for calm weather so that he could try again: "We can now turn Puffin right 'round."

Straining for Second Wind. Racing to beat Wimpenny and his crew to the historic flight are two other British flying clubs. Southampton University aerodynamics students have built Sumpac, which has an 80-ft. wing span and also uses a pusher propeller. Their pilot is longdistance Runner Martin Hyman, who pedals in a low-slung cockpit while reclining on his back. Sumpac, which made its maiden flight one week before Puffin, is still given to ground loops and violent yaws that its pilot is unable to control.

The Southend Man Powered Aircraft Group is trying still a third approach. Their craft, scheduled to fly this fall, will be powered by two men pedaling side by side in a reclining position. The group decided on a two-man crew because of "a better power-weight ratio." The reclining position for the cyclists was chosen because it allowed for the design of a nose less resistant to the wind. Thus far, Britain's man-powered flight enthusiasts have been able to achieve outputs of little better than one-half horsepower. And they are little closer to their goal than Da Vinci was with his flapping bird, than mythical Icarus was when the sun melted his wings and he crashed in a shower of feathers into the Icarian sea.

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