Tag Archives: helicopter

Behold: the Surefly form Ohio-based hybrid vehicle manufacturer Workhorse – a lightweight, carbon fibre, petrol+electric powered, 8-rotor personal helicopter capable of flying two passengers 1.2km high and at speeds up to 112km\h.

The rotor arms fold so you can park the thing in your driveway, taking up around the same space as an SUV.

Yours for around €168,000.

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LLC 206B3 Jetranger pilot Dan Clark loading trucks like a man unhinged during the annual harvest at Noble Mountain Christmas tree farm in Oregon (the Christmas tree capital of the USA) back in 2008.

And below – cockpit POV of another Oregon tree harvester doing the same job with equal precision but slightly less speed last November.

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(H/T: Owen)

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Youtuber ‪João Guimarães‬ captures the amazing skills of a firefighting chopper pilot as he makes the first two of 25 refills at a neighbour’s swimming pool in Portugal, a legal last resort in wildfire situations. João sez:

…he was returning to the airfield from another bushfire when he saw the initial smoke column. He took the initiative to land and start the attack on his own since the fire was so close to houses. He made about 25 refills at the swimming pool, and this bucket carries about 600 liters, if I remember correctly. The swimming pool level lowered not even 40 cm after the mission. The helicopter left when the first firetruck arrived, the fire having already been extinguished.

Another angle here.

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The $250,000 Igor I. Sikorsky Human Powered Helicopter Competition, which has been contested unsuccessfully by all manner of chopper boffins since 1980, has been won  by the first human-powered helicopter to fulfill all three of the American Helicopter Association’s criteria, namely: a flight lasting at least 60 seconds, rising at least once to a height of 3m while maintaining its centre-point inside a 10m square.

Last month, the AeroVelo team from the University of Toronto hovered their Atlas pedal-powered quadrotor (which measures a massive 47m across but only weighs 54kg) for 64.1 seconds and reached a maximum height of 3.3 meters.

AeroVelo, University Of Toronto Team, Win Human Powered Helicopter Flight Competition (HuffPo)

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