In May 2011, Jetman achieved a beautiful and memorable flight in the Grand Canyon in Arizona, USA... and here's the official souvenir video! Many thanks to all who were involved in that adventure!
Aerials by http://www.h5productions.com and http://www.principalphoto.com
THE PROJECT
In 2006, the Swiss pilot Yves Rossy became the first and only man in the history of aviation to fly with a jet-propelled wing, and still is to this day.Yves Rossy was born on August 27th, 1959 in Switzerland. After attending an airshow and admiring military jets when he was 13, he decided that was what he wanted to do. He succeeded in becoming a military pilot, was assigned on the Hawker Hunter, and later Mirage III. After his career in the Air Force, he has worked as a captain with Swiss International Air Lines on commercial flights on Boeing and Airbus airliners.
Yves has always dedicated all his free time to flight and experimented all its forms. His dream was however to try to fly in the most natural way possible, by removing the need for the complicated enclosure an aircraft is. He was therefore drawn to the world of free fall, and experimented by trial and error all ways that could allow him to stay longer in the air and control his trajectory, to turn a fall into a flight: sky surf, wingsuit. Still not satisfied, he developed his first real wing, made of a rigid harness and inflatable wing panels, that he was to strap to his back to exceed the performance of all other attempts at “falling forward” that existed at the time.
The next step was naturally to gain total freedom by making the whole wing rigid and adding engines. Yves chose to go with model jet turbines, at first 2 of them, which allowed him to just hold level flight in 2005, and then 4 to finally conquer the 3rd dimension in 2006 – not within an enclosed space with mechanical controls and instruments, but by truly flying like a bird for 10 minutes at a time, with nothing but his body and feelings, floating like if the wing was a natural part of his body, so much that he doesn’t even feel it in flight. This was finally the reward of 10 years of development and more than 15 prototypes. All he has is an altimeter for safety, and a tiny throttle control in his hand.
Since then, Yves Rossy has been training constantly in order to optimise his wing’s handling and performance. This endeavour was rewarded for the first time in May 2008 in front of the worldwide press with his first official flight over the Swiss Alps.In September 2008, 99 years after the first crossing of the English Channel by air, the man now known as JETMAN followed the path of Louis Blériot, achieving an amazing flight that was broadcast live to 165 countries and widely covered by the worldwide press. Yves Rossy became legendary – even if all this ground work is actually only just opening the way to a world of adventures and emotions, both for him and his fans!
Since then, he has developed a whole new wing shape with much better stability and control, leading to the first formation flights and aerobatic demonstrations in 2010!
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HISTORY
For several decades, Yves Rossy has wanted to fly like a bird, with a minimum of instruments but with the ability to steer himself in space.After prototypes of skysurf (1993-1998), wingsuit and inflatable wing (1999-2003), he had the idea to power a wing using model jet engines. The German company Jet-Cat supplied the engines which were initially attached to an inflatable wing. This method failed because of insufficient rigidity.In 2004 Yves Rossy developed a rigid deployable 3m-span carbon wing. The early days were difficult but promising. The pilot worked on improving the wing deployment system and the aerodynamics of the wingtips to improve its stability.
In 2005, he completed two successful flights under a wing fitted with two jet engines A long year of hard work and the addition of two additional jet engines were needed for the wing to attain the required level of performance and safety. This prototype with 4 jet engines, guided only with the movements of his body, allows a stabilized ascension of the flight. This was the flight of November 2006, in Bex, a dream lasting 5 minutes and 40 seconds.
Since then, Yves Rossy has been training constantly in order to optimise his wing. He increased the range of the wing in order to fly across the English Channel from Calais (France) to Dover (UK) in September 2008.Yves is now working on a new prototype, smaller and more powerful, which will should allow the take-off from the ground and more freedom for aerobatics!
IN FIGURES
DIMENSIONS Span 2 m
WEIGHT With fuel and smoke 55 kg Dry 30 kg
ENGINES
Type 4 Jet-Cat P200 of 22 kilograms thrust each, automatic start (25 second sequence)
Fuel type Mix of kerosene and 5% of turbine oil for lubrification
Fuel quantity 30 L.
PERFORMANCE
Speed
- Average 200 km/h
- At Ascent 180 km/h
- On Descent 300 km/h
Climb 330 m/min
Flight time 10 minutes
SAFETY FEATURES
Parachute Parachutes de France « Legend R »
Canopy PD Spectra 230
Harness Cut-away system with engine shut down and automatic opening of a rescue parachute for the wing
More info on http://www.jetman.com
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