by John Ostrem
EAA Chapter 54
In the aviation business it’s usually all about speed - but wait - not so fast! Thinking about the
slowest airplane to ever fly, it turns out to be the human-powered “Gossamer Condor” from the
late 1970s.
The pedal-powered plane was capable of sustained flight, winning the $95,000
Kremer Trophy. In 1959, Henry Kremer, a wealthy British engineer working with the “Man
Powered Aircraft Group of the Royal Aeronautical Society” in Europe, outlined the criteria for
the valuable prize. Various engineers had tried unsuccessfully to win the prize for 18 years.
Then, American Paul MacCready, AeroVironment, Inc., designed and built the Gossamer
Condor in 1977. After just six months of trial and error he trusted hang-glider pilot Bryan Allen
to attempt the record. A human-powered plane was required to fly a 1.15-mile figure-8 course
with a 10-foot bar at each end, one half mile apart. Allen, a 137-pound bicycle racer, with no
FAA pilot's license, navigated the 96-foot, 70-pound Mylar and aluminum airplane around the
course in Bakersfield, California. The flight lasted six minutes, averaging 11 miles per hour.
Today, that airplane is featured in the National Air and Space Museum, in Washington DC.
Paul MacCready was a brilliant aeronautical engineer with a BS in Physics from Yale, and a
Masters and PhD from California Institute of Technology who had won the national airplane
model building championship.
British engineer Kremer had also created a challenge to be the
first human to pedal an airplane across the 23-mile English Channel. MacCready accepted that
challenge and built the 96-foot “Gossamer Albatross,” made of Mylar, polystyrene and carbon
ribs, also weighing 70 pounds. He was most concerned with the winds over the Channel that
were especially dangerous for the extremely light aircraft, but they were successful in the flight.
Not one to be content with pedal power, in July 1981 he designed a solar-powered airplane to
win the “Solar Challenge,” with a 160-mile flight from Paris to Pontoise, France.
Pilot Steven
Ptacek flew the 47-foot, 210-pound airplane to an amazing altitude of 11,000 feet. The craft
had two electric motors, 16,128 solar cells, and he flew for five hours 23 minutes!
If flight was not a big enough challenge, MacCready’s SUNRAYCER Solar Car also won the
1,867-mile auto race in Australia. It seems relatively easy to make a plane go faster with a larger
engine and less drag, but the design problems with human power and super slow flight are
likely just as difficult. Going slow and using zero fuel, except for a pilot with a few “power
bars,” proved to be a very difficult challenge.
So, if you are in the pattern at Lake Elmo and the
“Gossamer Condor” calls in on a 3-mile final, you will probably need a 20-minute extended
downwind leg!
In 1991, Dr. Paul MacCready was inducted into the United States National Aviation Hall of Fame.
