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AHS congratulates AHS Sikorsky Prize winners AeroVelo for two new unofficial world records that will be submitted for official FAI adjudication: (1) women’s record of 55 seconds on September 24 and (2) men’s endurance record of 87 seconds, limited by the powertrain line length, on September 23.
In addition, numerous “fun” records were also set, including youngest pilot (15 years old), oldest pilot (reaching about 60 seconds), and most pilots (more than a dozen) making flights in one day. Cameron Robertson, the co-chief engineer of the AeroVelo team also took the aircraft up for the first time. These flights were made on September 24. More details are available at www.twitter.com/AeroVelo.
A longer endurance record had been hoped for on September 24 by using longer, thinner drive lines. However, according to AeroVelo, with “the thinner drive lines, small power fluctuations seem to amplify any imbalance in the rotors. The flight was called down at 57 seconds.”
AeroVelo won the AHS Sikorsky Prize on June 13, 2013 (see www.vtol.org/aerovelo). This was a competition that had eluded the aerospace technical community for a third of a century.
