Dream Makers

By LEON JAROFF

THE BIRD WATCHER

In the middle of a conversation in his office at AeroVironment, the high-tech company he founded and heads, Paul MacCready suddenly pauses, apologizes, opens a notebook already jam-packed with sketches and notes and jots down a new idea. "I've got a restless mind that just sort of darts around," he says apologetically.

This modest explanation hardly does justice to a cerebral process that has resulted in the world's first successful man-powered and solar-powered aircraft, earned its owner the title of Engineer of the Century from the American Society of Mechanical Engineers and won him worldwide acclaim. Now at 75 he is still spewing out offbeat and innovative ideas faster than his creative team at AeroVironment can act on them. Currently in the works are projects ranging from a solar-powered, unmanned plane with a wingspan nearly as large as a football field to a pocket-size device that substitutes for a visit to the health club to a contraption that literally makes a backpacking hiker light on his feet.

What's the secret of MacCready's creativity? "When it comes to my abilities," he says, "I think that there is a lot less than meets the eye." He admits he's good at "synthesizing concepts" and making connections. Perhaps his most innovative thoughts occur away from work, particularly when "getting away on vacation, where you can relax, daydream and let your mind wander." In fact, MacCready considers daydreaming his most productive activity.

That's just what he was doing one day in 1976, driving along a highway with his family during a month-long summer vacation. Random thoughts flitted across his mind--a $100,000 note he had co-signed for a relative, now unexpectedly due; the news from Britain about the pound, which had risen to around $2; yes, and the Kremer Prize. Why, he mused, had no one been able to claim the [pound]50,000 offered by British industrialist Henry Kremer for the first man-powered flight around a mile-long, figure-eight course? "Then a light bulb went on above my head," says MacCready. "It was a eureka moment." The Kremer Prize, he realized, would about pay off his debt. Sometimes inspiration is just that mundane. Necessity, invention's putative mother, comes in many guises.

BIRD WATCHING

Back behind the wheel several days later, while MacCready was glancing upward watching birds circle, he drew on his physics and aeronautical education from Yale and Caltech, casually estimating the birds' bank angle. By timing their circles, he calculated their speed. His mind drifted to hang gliders and sailplanes, comparing their flying characteristics with those of birds. Then came the second--and more creative--eureka moment. The Kremer Prize was as good as won.

"If you triple the size of a hang-glider-size plane and triple its wingspan to 90 ft. while keeping its weight the same," MacCready explains, "the power needed to fly it goes down by a factor of 3, to about 0.4 horsepower." And that, he knew, was what a trained cyclist could pump out for several minutes at a stretch.

A year later, with the help of his sons and some talented colleagues, the Gossamer Condor was ready. Assembled out of piano wire, aluminum tubes, bicycle parts, Mylar film and a propeller, it was successfully flown around the Kremer course by furiously pedaling Bryan Allen, a racing cyclist and glider pilot. MacCready's place in history was assured.

Slight, shy and unathletic as a child, MacCready turned to solitary hobbies. He collected butterfly and moth specimens, assembled model airplanes from kits, began designing his own planes and at 15 won several national model-airplane contests. He took flying lessons, soloed at age 16 and trained as a fighter pilot during World War II. He learned to soar as a glider pilot while at Yale and in 1956 became the first American to win the World Soaring Championship.

Emboldened by his success with Condor, MacCready set his sights on a second Kremer Prize, [pound]100,000, to be awarded this time for the first crossing of the English Channel by a man-powered aircraft. Piece of cake. In 1979 a greatly improved version of the Condor, the Gossamer Albatross, successfully flew across 23 miles of Channel water.

Many of MacCready's daydreams involved nature's largest flying creation, the pterodactyl, which disappeared with the dinosaurs 65 million years ago. In 1986 a MacCready-inspired, wing-flapping, computer-brained, radio-controlled and astonishingly realistic pterodactyl was photographed as it swept over Death Valley, Calif., for the Smithsonian Institution's IMAX film On the Wing. Today his Gossamer Condor hangs alongside the Wright Brothers' Flyer and Lindbergh's Spirit of St. Louis in the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum in Washington, which also includes the Gossamer Albatross and the pterodactyl in its permanent collection.

Turning his eyes earthward, and in consort with General Motors, MacCready conceived the Sunraycer, a solar-powered electric car that averaged 41 m.p.h. in a 1,867-mile race across Australia, finishing two days ahead of its nearest competitor. It too became part of the Smithsonian's collection and was the forerunner of the AeroVironment-designed Impact, an experimental GM battery-powered electric car that in turn evolved into the electric EV-1 auto, which GM is leasing to customers in California and Arizona.

Another collaboration, with the Department of Defense, has produced a surveillance micro-aircraft with a wingspan of only 6 in. Equipped with a camera, it can fly at speeds of up to 43 m.p.h. And in the works, MacCready says, is an even more diminutive craft that will weigh only half an ounce, including controls, camera and transmitter.

On the macro scale, AeroVironment designed and built the Pathfinder, a six-engine, battery-powered, unmanned plane with a 121-ft. wingspan that in 1998 flew to an altitude of 80,400 ft., higher than any propeller plane has ever flown. The Centurion, a successor model with an enormous wingspan of 206 ft., is using solar cells, and, says MacCready, "we're expecting to fly it to 100,000 ft. in late spring." The ultimate descendant of these craft, the Helios, will have a fuel-cell energy-storage system to provide power for flying at night. That will enable the plane to remain in high-altitude flight for months at a time, providing many functions of a satellite at a bargain-basement price.

As AeroVironment's chairman, MacCready says, "I try to avoid administrative tasks as much as I can." Instead, he thinks about the "big picture and what the world needs" and turns his ideas over to his 150-person, highly trained work force, which designs and creates electronic and mechanical devices, largely for government agencies and industry. Some of his initial creative work is done at home, with "crude tools and some duct tape and vises and hacksaws" bought at the local hardware store. "I build things myself," he says, "and if they work, then they get into the company. If they don't work, then that's my tough luck."

Many of them have worked, including Electroshove, an assembly that can be snapped onto most conventional bicycles in a few seconds, converting them to electric models. Of his newer gadgets he seems most proud of Technalegs, a strap-on contraption with little, jointed, lockable, telescoping "intelligent canes" that can support as much as three-quarters of the weight of a hiker and his backpack. "You can carry your wife on your back all day without getting tired," he jokes.

Indeed, MacCready thinks that a number of legged devices could be more efficient than wheels for moving about. "You could make a wheelchair that can go up and down stairs," he muses.

Pause. Eureka! MacCready reaches for his notebook. That restless brain is at work again.