What was the name of the human powered aircraft which crossed the Channel in 1979?
"MacCready Gossamer Albatross The Gossamer Albatross is a human-powered aircraft built by American aeronautical engineer Dr. Paul B. MacCready's company AeroVironment. On June 12, 1979, it completed a successful crossing of the English Channel to win the second £100,000 (£ today) Kremer prize. The aircraft was designed and built by a team led by Paul B. MacCready, a noted American aeronautics engineer, designer, and world soaring champion. ""Gossamer Albatross"" was his second human-powered aircraft, the first being the ""Gossamer Condor"", which had won the first Kremer prize on August 23, 1977, by completing a -long figure-eight course. The second Kremer"
"mass for the Channel flight was almost . To maintain the craft in the air, it was designed with very long, tapering wings (high aspect ratio), like those of a glider, allowing the flight to be undertaken with a minimum of power. In still air, the required power was on the order of , though even mild turbulence made this figure rise rapidly. Just before 6 am on June 12, 1979, amateur cyclist and pilot Bryan Allen, powered the ""Albatross"" to the rehearsed speed of 75 revolutions per minute and took off from a point near Folkestone, England. The Channel"
"Musée des Arts et Métiers in Paris, a number of examples have been preserved. Both the British and American restored-to-airworthiness examples, each now over a century old and believed to be the two oldest flyable aircraft anywhere on Earth, are usually only ""hopped"" for short distances due to their uniqueness. Blériot XI The Blériot XI is a French aircraft of the pioneer era of aviation. The first example was used by Louis Blériot to make the first flight across the English Channel in a heavier-than-air aircraft, on 25 July 1909. This is one of the most famous accomplishments of the"
"across the English Channel in 1954, initially using a fleet of Bristol Freighter twin-engined, piston-powered planes. These were later supplemented and eventually superseded by the larger-capacity, four-engined Carvairs. The Carvair design was based on the Douglas DC-4 piston-engined airliner. It involved raising the aircraft's cockpit ""above"" the fuselage in a 747-style bulge so as to create more space for vehicles and/or passengers on the main deck. It also involved replacing the DC-4's original tail fin with a newly designed, larger DC-7-style fin as well as equipping the aircraft with a Bristol Freighter-type nose-loading cargo door, more powerful brakes and a"
"performance of the craft during the exercise was commended by the services. On 25 July 1959, the 50th anniversary of Louis Blériot's cross-channel flight, the SR.N1 serial G-12-4 crossed the English Channel from Calais to Dover in just over two hours; the crew during this crossing consisted of Captain Peter Lamb (pilot), John Chaplin (navigator) and Cockerell himself. Testing had revealed several interesting tendencies of hovercraft, such as that there was an inevitable delay between the heading of the craft changing and the direction that it was travelling in would change to match. In addition, travelling overland posed more difficulty"
"Dover and Boulogne but later also Ramsgate (Pegwell Bay) to Calais. The journey time Dover to Boulogne was roughly 35 minutes, with six trips per day at peak times. The fastest crossing of the English Channel by a commercial car-carrying hovercraft was 22 minutes, recorded by the ""Princess Anne"" MCH SR-N4 Mk3 on 14 September 1995, The first aircraft to cross the Channel was a balloon in 1785, piloted by Jean Pierre François Blanchard (France) and John Jeffries (US). Louis Blériot (France) piloted the first airplane to cross in 1909. The sport of Channel swimming traces its origins to the"
"25, 1909, was the first person to fly across the English Channel. He flew from the beach at Sangatte to the White Cliffs of Dover, to claim the prize offered by the Daily Mail. The crossing took 37 minutes in his aeroplane, Blériot XI, built in collaboration with Raymond Saulnier. It was powered by a 3-cylinder engine. At the western end of the beach, a statue of the French aviator Hubert Latham overlooks the sea (). Latham was another pioneering cross-channel pilot whose earlier attempt on July 19 had failed. Sangatte also achieved notoriety as the location of a controversial"
"Blériot XI The Blériot XI is a French aircraft of the pioneer era of aviation. The first example was used by Louis Blériot to make the first flight across the English Channel in a heavier-than-air aircraft, on 25 July 1909. This is one of the most famous accomplishments of the pioneer era of aviation, and not only won Blériot a lasting place in history but also assured the future of his aircraft manufacturing business. The event caused a major reappraisal of the importance of aviation; the English newspaper ""The Daily Express"" led its story of the flight with the headline"
"2015 the electric-powered Electravia version of the design flew across the English Channel hours before the Airbus E-Fan, becoming the third electric aircraft to do so. It was pulled aloft by another aircraft and did not take off on its own. The first was the MacCready Solar Challenger in 1981 and the second used electric motors powered by hydrogen. Colomban Cri-cri The Colomban Cri-Cri is the smallest twin-engined manned aircraft in the world, designed in the early 1970s by French aeronautical engineer Michel Colomban. The name ""Cri-Cri"" comes from the nickname of Christine, one of Colomban's daughters. 'Cri-cri' 'or 'cricri'"
"passengers. In 1975 Aeroflot started regular service on the Tu-144—the first supersonic passenger plane. In 1976 British Airways and Air France began supersonic service across the Atlantic, with Concorde. A few years earlier the SR-71 Blackbird had set the record for crossing the Atlantic in under 2 hours, and Concorde followed in its footsteps. In 1979 the Gossamer Albatross became the first human powered aircraft to cross the English channel. This achievement finally saw the realization of centuries of dreams of human flight. The last quarter of the 20th century saw a change of emphasis. No longer was revolutionary progress"
"January 1916. Eleanor Trehawke Davies Eleanor Josephine Trehawke Davies (1880 – 1915) was an English aviator and the first woman to fly across the English Channel and to have ""looped the loop"" in an aircraft. Davies was born in 1880 in St Pancras, London, the daughter of Frederick and Eleanor Davies. Davies who was known as ""Miss Trehawke Davies"" was never a pilot but known at the time as an ""air companion"" to a number of early aviators. In August 1911 she chartered Horatio Barber to fly her from Hendon to Brighton and back. The flight, hampered by cloud and"
"1785, when Jean-Pierre Blanchard and John Jeffries crossed the English Channel in a hot air balloon. It took more than a century for the first heavier-than-air object to repeat this process: Louis Blériot crossed the English Channel on July 25, 1909, winning a ""Daily Mail"" prize of £1,000. Aviation technology developed during World War I, with aviation between the World Wars seeing the development of international commercial flights. There was a combination of aircraft types which included airships and airplanes. The first airline to operate international flights was Chalk's Ocean Airways, established 1917, which operated scheduled seaplane services from Florida"
"a transatlantic flight, Capt. J. Errol Boyd (1891-1960). Boyd took off 9 Oct 1930 from the Harbour Grace airstrip in the plane Maple Leaf (aka, Columbia), navigated by Lieut. Harry Connor, and landed 10 Oct in Tresco, Scilly Isles, England. The gun was engraved to mark the historic flight and is also tatted with the owner’s initials. The company logo is that of a bird wing with the tips angling left and W+S underneath and the gun is stamped 7648. Webley & Scott Webley & Scott is an arms manufacturer founded in Birmingham, England. Webley produced handguns and long guns"
"the flight. At 4:15 am on the 25 July 1909, watched by an excited crowd, Blériot made a short trial flight in his Type XI, and then, on a signal that the sun had risen (the competition rules required a flight between sunrise and sunset), he took off at 4:41 for the attempted crossing. Flying at approximately and an altitude of about 250 ft (76 m), he set off across the Channel. Not having a compass, Blériot took his course from the ""Escopette"", which was heading for Dover, but he soon overtook the ship. The visibility deteriorated, and he later"
"France. It successfully crossed the English Channel between Calais and Dover on 25 July 1959, 50 years to the day after the historic crossing by Bleriot. In January 1959, the NRDC formed a subsidiary called Hovercraft Development Ltd. Cockerell was the Technical Director and the company controlled the patents which it used to license several private sector firms to manufacture craft under the registered trademark of Hovercraft. Cockerell received an Honorary Doctorate from Heriot-Watt University in 1971. In later life, Cockerell developed many other improvements to the hovercraft, and invented various other applications for the air cushion principle, such as"
"this company is an ancestor of modern-day British Airways. Using a fleet of former military Airco DH.4A biplanes that had been modified to carry two passengers in the fuselage, it operated relief flights between Folkestone and Ghent. On 15 July 1919, the company flew a proving flight across the English Channel, despite a lack of support from the British government. Flown by Lt. H Shaw in an Airco DH.9 between RAF Hendon and Paris – Le Bourget Airport, the flight took 2 hours and 30 minutes at £21 per passenger. On 25 August 1919, the company used DH.16s to pioneer"
"flight across the English Channel with crew member Don Piccard in a balloon later named the “Channel Champ.” In 1976, Yost set 13 aviation world’s records for distance traveled and amount of time aloft in his attempt to cross the Atlantic Ocean —solo— by balloon. He designed and built his balloon, the “Silver Fox,"" himself, partly in his home garage. It featured a gondola that was shaped like a boat in the event that he would be forced down at sea — which is precisely what occurred. Although he had traveled far in excess of the distance needed to reach"
"mural. A small amount of mail, 196 letters and a parcel, was carried on Alcock and Brown's flight, the first time mail was carried by air across the ocean. The government of the Dominion of Newfoundland overprinted stamps for this carriage with the inscription ""Transatlantic air post 1919"". Upon landing in Paris after his own record breaking flight in 1927, Charles Lindbergh told the crowd welcoming him that ""Alcock and Brown showed me the way!"" To mark the original transatlantic crossing, on the 1 June 1979 two Royal Air Force McDonnell Douglas Phantom FGR.2s – XV424 (of No. 56 Squadron)"
"to push the craft forward. The British aircraft and marine engineering company Saunders-Roe built the first practical human-carrying hovercraft for the National Research Development Corporation, the SR.N1, which carried out several test programmes in 1959 to 1961 (the first public demonstration was in 1959), including a cross-channel test run in July 1959, piloted by Peter ""Sheepy"" Lamb, an ex-naval test pilot and the chief test pilot at Saunders Roe. Christopher Cockerell was on board, and the flight took place on the 50th anniversary of Louis Blériot's first aerial crossing. The SR.N1 was powered by a single piston engine, driven by"
"US aboard a ship, but only had room for one of the captured ""Drachen"". The RAF objected to plans to destroy the other, the V14, so Gerstenhauer, with two observers, flew it across the English Channel from Cherbourg to RAF Beaulieu on 6 September 1945, the first crossing of the Channel by a helicopter. The V14 later made two test flights at RAF Beaulieu before being destroyed on 3 October, when a driveshaft failed. The accident was thought to be due to a failure to correctly tension the steel cables which secured the engine, despite warnings from Gerstenhauer. In France,"
"solar-powered crossing of the Atlantic Ocean in the winter of 2006–2007. There were plans to circumnavigate the globe in 2010. In 1974, the unmanned AstroFlight Sunrise airplane made the first solar flight. On 29 April 1979, the ""Solar Riser"" made the first flight in a solar-powered, fully controlled, man-carrying flying machine, reaching an altitude of . In 1980, the ""Gossamer Penguin"" made the first piloted flights powered solely by photovoltaics. This was quickly followed by the ""Solar Challenger"" which crossed the English Channel in July 1981. In 1990 Eric Scott Raymond in 21 hops flew from California to North Carolina"
"first crossing of the English Channel 20 years earlier. On 9 October 1930, Following the R101 Airship disaster in Beauvais, France, 41 Squadron pilots and ground crew formed a part of the Guard of Honour for the Lying-in-State of the 48 victims in the Palace of Westminster. Amongst the dead were the Secretary of State for Air, Brig. Gen. Lord Christopher Thomson PC CBE DSO, and the Director of Civil Aviation, Air Vice-Marshal Sir Sefton Brancker KCB AFC. Thousands filed past to pay their last respects. During the 1930s, displays, sports, competitions, tactical exercises and flying practice were a part"
"to make the premier Atlantic crossing by balloon ended when bad weather forced his heated helium balloon ""Zanussi"" down after a 2,000 mile flight from Canada. It was piloted by Cameron and Christopher Davey. They left St. John's, Newfoundland and Labrador on 26 July 1978, covered 1,780 miles, and ditched on 30 July 1978 in the Bay of Biscay only 110 miles from France after a tear developed in the balloon. The two planned a second attempt, but discarded their plans when the ""Double Eagle II"" successfully made a transatlantic flight three weeks later. Cameron and Davey were awarded the"
"utilize more than one person. The historical galley was propelled by freemen or citizens in ancient times, and by slaves captured by pirates in more recent times. The MacCready Gossamer Condor was the first human-powered aircraft capable of controlled and sustained flight, making its first flight in 1977. In 2007, Jason Lewis of Expedition 360 became the first person to circumnavigate the globe at non-polar latitudes using only human power — walking, biking, and rollerblading across the landmasses; and swimming, kayaking, rowing, and using a 26-foot-long pedal-powered boat to cross the oceans. Some equipment uses human power. It may directly"
"Hubert Latham Arthur Charles Hubert Latham (10 January 1883 – 25 June 1912) was a French aviation pioneer. He was the first person to attempt to cross the English Channel in an aeroplane. Due to engine failure during his first of two attempts to cross the Channel, he became the first person to land an aeroplane on a body of water. In August 1909 at the ""Grande Semaine d'Aviation de la Champagne"" he set the world altitude record of in his Antoinette IV. In April 1910 he set the official World Airspeed Record of in his Antoinette VII. Latham was"
"Eleanor Trehawke Davies Eleanor Josephine Trehawke Davies (1880 – 1915) was an English aviator and the first woman to fly across the English Channel and to have ""looped the loop"" in an aircraft. Davies was born in 1880 in St Pancras, London, the daughter of Frederick and Eleanor Davies. Davies who was known as ""Miss Trehawke Davies"" was never a pilot but known at the time as an ""air companion"" to a number of early aviators. In August 1911 she chartered Horatio Barber to fly her from Hendon to Brighton and back. The flight, hampered by cloud and high winds,"
"while it completed the required figure eight course, thereby winning the first Kremer prize in 1977. The award-winning plane was constructed of aluminium tubing, plastic foam, piano wire, bicycle parts, and mylar foil for covering. Kremer then offered another £100,000 for the first human-powered crossing of the English Channel. MacCready took up the challenge and in 1979, he built the Condor's successor, the ""Gossamer Albatross"", and won the second Kremer prize, successfully flying from England to France. He also received the Collier Trophy, which is awarded annually for the greatest achievement in aeronautics or astronautics, for his design and construction"
"crossed the English Channel in one in 1785. Rigid airships became the first aircraft to transport passengers and cargo over great distances. The best known aircraft of this type were manufactured by the German Zeppelin company. The most successful Zeppelin was the Graf Zeppelin. It flew over one million miles, including an around-the-world flight in August 1929. However, the dominance of the Zeppelins over the airplanes of that period, which had a range of only a few hundred miles, was diminishing as airplane design advanced. The ""Golden Age"" of the airships ended on May 6, 1937 when the Hindenburg caught"
"one aircraft was used in the attempt. A month after Alcock and Brown's achievement, British airship R34 made the first double crossing of the Atlantic, carrying 31 people (one a stowaway) and a cat; 29 of this crew, plus two flight engineers and a different American observer, then flew back to Europe. On 2–3 July 2005, American adventurer Steve Fossett and co-pilot Mark Rebholz recreated the flight in a replica of the Vickers Vimy aeroplane. They did not land in the bog near Clifden, but a few miles away on the Connemara golf course. A replica Vimy, NX71MY, was built"
"turf (funded by oil manufacturer Alexander Duckham), marks his landing spot above the cliffs near Dover Castle. . The aircraft which was used in the crossing is now preserved in the Musée des Arts et Métiers in Paris. Blériot's success brought about an immediate transformation of the status of ""Recherches Aéronautiques Louis Blériot."" By the time of the Channel flight, he had spent at least 780,000 francs on his aviation experiments. (To put this figure into context, one of Blériot's skilled mechanics was paid 250 francs a month.) Now this investment began to pay off: orders for copies of the"
"challenge was then announced as a flight across the English Channel recalling Louis Blériot's crossing of 1909. The aircraft is of ""canard"" configuration, using a large horizontal stabilizer forward of the wing in a manner similar to the Wright brothers' successful ""Wright Flyer"" aircraft and powered using pedals to drive a large, two-bladed propeller. The ""Gossamer Albatross"" was constructed using a carbon fiber frame, with the ribs of the wings made with expanded polystyrene; the entire structure was then wrapped in a thin, transparent plastic (mylar PET film). The empty mass of the structure was only , although the gross"
"an altitude of , landing at Saint-Inglevert after a flight of one and a half hours to the surprise of the airfield manager. The first double crossing of the Channel in a glider was made by Austrian Robert Kronfeld on 20 June. In a glider called ""Wien"", he took off from Saint-Inglevert by means of an aero-tow to an altitude of , and landed at the former RAF Swingfield airfield near Dover, Kent. From Swingfield, another aero-tow to an altitude of enabled him to return to Saint-Inglevert. Kronfeld received a £1,000 prize from the ""Daily Mail"" for his flights, which"
"25 July 1909, he made the first flight across the English Channel. Shortly afterward the W3 configuration was changed to a 120°-angle, three-cylinder radial engine configuration as the original W3 engine's replacement. The 1917 Napier Lion aircraft engine was an early W12 engine. Lorraine built the 12Ed and 18Ka aero-engines of and in the early 1920s, while Isotta Fraschini built the 18-cylinder Asso 750 and Asso 1000 of and in the late 1920s. At the same time the Farman 12We was used by many aircraft; Farman also built a W18. A three-bank W12 design was also pursued by Audi, which"