Alban Geissler
SkyRay Inventor
Skyray Human Glider Flight
Tired of dawdling along at one hundred and twenty miles an
hour, a typical terminal velocity for human-shaped
skydivers? Can you go faster? and farther?
Terminal velocity is the point where the force of air
resistance pushing up on the skydiver is equal to gravity
pulling down; the skydiver no longer accelerates, but falls
at a nice constant speed no matter what you try. And of
course, there's that whole "going straight down" problem.
For those who would like to go
a little faster (not to mention farther) there's the
Skyray, an attachable wing system that lets humans go
beyond skydiving to "skyflying." In recent test flights,
Skyray-equipped skyflyers have been able to attain speeds
over 200 miles per hour. This is the same speed range as
the fastest bird, the peregrine falcon, which stoops for
prey at 200 miles per hour (not the spine-tailed swift, a
comparative slowpoke at only 100 miles per hour, as
reported elsewhere). Sir Hugh Beaver of Guinness Breweries
spent a fortune to determine this fact, and launched the
Guiness Book of World Records in the process.
Three long years of development in cooperation with the
University of Applied Science (Munich) have created a
two-piece device. The first section is a harness with rigid
back section; the harness remains with the skyflyer after
the second section, the wing itself, is released when the
user is ready to parachute the rest of the way to the
ground. The wing has its own parachute and is recovered
separately. This configuration was designed for safety (by
all means, safety first) and is patent-pending.
The best distance is reached with a glide ratio of two to
three and a resultant velocity of about 220 kilometers per
hour. Recently, a skyflyer flew across the English Channel
in this manner, becoming the first non-powered flyer to do
so. Carbon fiber and aramid fiber were used in construction
for strength and lightness; the whole assembly weighs only
nine pounds.