For Christmas 2016 I Give The World The ParaWing
A personal flight device research and design overview set free for 2017
Historical Inspiration & State-of-the-Art Technology
One of my heroes is Leonardo da Vinci because of how prolific and varied his artistic and scientific interests appeared in books. Paintings. Drawings. Designs. Inventions. This inspiration took hold strong, and over time I learned to see how modern technology and art continue to overlap time after time.
Like him, my fascination with flight is lifelong. I grew up in flying households, passed many opportunities to study and get licensed myself, but every time I’m in a commercial airliner taking off, I smile, thinking of the adrenaline that comes with flying low and fast — barnstorming is in my blood. Luckily, the interest in Leonardo’s flight-related work continues and gets revisited occasionally like with his parachute and glider concepts.
Considering his drawings go back to the 1500s, it’s fair to assume that technology and science have advanced significantly. What do we have in 2016? Let’s start with JetMan, Yyves Rossy:
The invention and proven performance of the JetMan wing is an incredible accomplishment. Even the engines used are an example of creative thinking — using turbines for large Radio Controlled (RC) Airplanes as his propulsion system. For sure, Yyves Rossy earned legendary aviator status.
Now let’s have a look at Zapata Racing and the Flyboard Air test:
Seeing this footage hit the web was exciting because of how initially so many people thought it was fake. Once the history was established — this team is the same behind the water-based Flyboard that uses jets of water to propel a person into the air — things started to make sense. The Flyboard Air is a legitimately functional machine and quite an accomplishment. It’s also impressive because it functions in spite of having no lift surfaces, e.g. wings, whatsoever.
These two examples are pretty much the latest and greatest personal flight devices known to the public in 2016. Both work and are engineering masterpieces, in my opinion. In recognizing that, I come back to one of my favorite movies of all time, Real Genius, which posed the question about “purpose” in the grand scheme of things — a scientific breakthrough is great on a standalone basis, but what of the practical applications?
For JetMan, his machine “takes off” by way of jumping out of a helicopter at altitude, and landing with the assistance of a parachute. For the Flyboard Air, the machine burns so much fuel so fast it’s necessary to wear a backpack full of kerosene to get any noteworthy flight time. Basically, neither one strikes me as a good platform for creating a larger market oriented machine unfortunately. Well, maybe fortunately if we’re thinking public safety.
The Secret of The ParaWing
By now I’ve talked a pretty big game about my relationship with aviation and it’s natural to be dismissive about what I can actually back up. I get it. I don’t like it particularly, but I get it. So when I came across a research paper that put forward significant, solid, useful, and applicable aerodynamic improvements in wing design, I looked around to see if I was simply late to the party.
As in, it looks amazing to me, but what about the professionals in industries where this is a part of success or failure?
Wind turbine blades. The only real-world application of the aerodynamic innovation documented in the research paper is, from what I can tell, in wind turbine blades. There were some experiments with helicopter rotors as well, but I’m uncertain as to the outcome or continuing interest. So what’s the big deal that I came across? This graphic is a great summary:
The Humpback Whale has evolved over time to have significant bumpy tubercles on the leading edge of their pectoral flipper, and the species is extremely maneuverable overall. The study I reference sought to examine how tubercles on the leading edge of a wing might affect aviation related parameters — lift, stall, that kind of stuff. The results? Promising!
As an untrained engineer, I’ve been slowly looking up formulas and the math to determine the size characteristics of a wing that resembles one of the models which shows benefit in stall characteristics. Why? Because I have a feeling that an improvement in low-speed maneuverability — as in, not as quick to stall — could be a significant component to a workable personal flight device. A specialized wing exploiting the tubercle design characteristics could be the answer to size, lift, and performance questions holding back personal flight. Now when I say workable, there’s a bit of a catch at first…
One Man’s Crazy Is Another Man’s Fucking Awesome
The name ParaWing is kind of a wonky play on the term ParaSailing, which looks like this:
The screw up on my part is there’s not supposed to be any parachute involved with the ParaWing, but it’s definitely not a water-based concept, so using the sailing part wouldn’t have been much better. I was trying to convey the idea of the person flying would be towed by a land vehicle. Considering I’ve lived in Texas for 20 years, I imagined a Ford Raptor doing something like this:
The ParaWing concept includes some on-board stability assist if possible, like with an Arduino or Raspberry Pi platform, and the pilot has fly-by-wire control surfaces as well (seen in the image as handles where the tow rope would also be anchored). In theory, the ParaWing concept would be tested without weight to work through initial flight control setups, then with dead weight (e.g. a “Dummy”) controlled from the vehicle, and eventually with a Human. If the ParaWing works in this deployment — yeah a big if — then adding a propulsion source is the next logical iteration, right?
I don’t want to get too ahead of things and mock-up miniature ParaWing airports for people to store their flight packs, to launch with a catapult system built into the ground, or claim that this is something really revolutionary when it comes to transportation. It’s more like a collage of other people’s great ideas; I hope it works and somebody tries it out in 2017. Why?
BECAUSE I WANT ONE!!!
