Fog delays Channel flight by Swiss birdman

Regulars here may remember Yves Rossy, the Swiss airline pilot who has turned himself into the world's first human jet. I spent the day with him today at Calais as he prepared to strap on his wings and become the first jetman cross the English Channel.

At the last minute, with TV networks broadcasting live, fog rolled in over the landing area at Dover so he had to call off the flight, which starts with a free-fall from a plane. (That's him in the picture getting the bad news from Dover.) He is going to try again tomorrow (Friday) lunchtime.

Rossy, a lanky, boyish 49-year-old was disappointed after preparing himself mentally all morning for what remains a dangerous mission. His flight of about 23 miles will take only about 13 minutes at 115 MPH, but if he runs out of fuel too soon or his four little jet engines cut, he must splash down under parachute in the cold grey water of the Channel.

We flew up from Paris in a Cessna to tag along behind the little escort fleet of two helicopters and two planes. The visibility on the French side of the Channel was already so poor that I found it hard to make out the Calais airport in the murk below us. That's when we small-time pilots bless GPS, the satellite positioning system. I cannot imagine what it would be like to fly in the same conditions with no instruments and no flight controls apart from your body. That's what Rossy does when he is being Fusionman, the name he uses for his human flying machine. Rossy, who is constantly cheerful, said the descending fog was just one variable too much.

"There are so many unknown factors. We don't want to add another layer," he said after being told by phone of the closing cloud. His senses told him not to push it, despite the pressure of heavy media attention and commitments to sponsors. "I have butterflies in my stomach and that's a bad sign," he said as he rolled his wings back from the Pilatus jump plane. "I only have one life and I would rather keep it."

I hope that he makes it tomorrow. He has to be back in the captain's seat of his A320 Airbus flying out of Zurich early next week. The forecast is better but we're expecting a headwind wind that could force another cancellation. With only just enough jet fuel to get across the Straits, Fusionman has no margin for error.

The pressure to perform on schedule is a strain that the early aviators did not suffer so much. Only a few reporters were in attendance at Calais and Dover in July 1909 when Louis Blériot, a French pioneer, became the first man to fly the Channel in an aircraft.

We'll make another attempt to watch Yves from the air tomorrow. You can watch him live on natgeotv.com   

[Calais pictures by Alastair Miller]

Comments

[Gilles]

The weather appears to be good to morrow and after to morrow.
Hope the best for his trip.

[Margaret]

What a terrific person, best of luck to him!!!!!

[Michael Robertson]

One has to admire this guy, not just for the sheer bravery of the exploit involved, but also for the technical achievement of attaching a small flying wing to a human body, and making the whole thing work with small jet engines attached, with all the stability and control problems that must be involved. For instance, it is not readily obvious as to how he raises and lowers the nose (i.e. pitch control, with no elevators) perhaps he raises his legs to cause the drag caused by so doing to raise and lower the nose, to change the slope of the glide etc. Perhaps the jets are attached in such a way to cause a significant nose up force when power is increased. Steering is presumably a result of curving the body round in the desired direction.

On top of all that, the wings must be made small enough to fit in the cabin of a small aircraft, which limits the span and therefore the performance of the craft as a result!

Beyond the sensation of it all, it’s a little hard to see where all this is heading. However, if he were to increase the wing area and span, put more powerful engines under the wing, and so increase the performance just enough, he would no longer need to jump from a plane at all! This might enable catapult assisted launches, rather like the German V1 doodlebug, or from a platform on the back of a flatbed truck, when a whole range of possibilities would become available. A small French plane called the “Cri Cri” already launches from the top of a vehicle! He could literally become a ground launched human cruise missile, without the need for a plane to jump from, and climb up from ground level up into the air, without needing a much of a runway,! I suspect it is this possibility which is driving his efforts, but for now, the cross channel feat would really put him on the map! I really hope he succeeds, but the pressure to proceed from the media and onlookers must be hard to cope with!

[Thank you Michael. It's good to have expert opinion here. I agree, Yves Rossy should be admired in the old fashioned way as a brave and innovating pioneer. CB]

[azloon]

boyish, always cheerful, adventurous almost beyond human imagination...and not ready to die ......hmmmm

a lesson here, i think -- that there is great joy in barely moderated lunacy?

btw, i hope those north sea loons have been briefed on all this -- that their fellow, albeit slightly larger, loon brother may soon be in their flight path.

i suspect fusionman is awares that birds are better suited to unprotected flight than he is.

[Romain]

I am reliefed the whole thing was delayed by the fog, and not the frogs.

[Romain]

Maybe you would like to watch the French Tv report on the subject :

http://tempsreel.nouvelobs.com/actualites/videos/20080926.OBS2841/un_reportage_sur_fusionman_et_son_aile_motorisee.html

[billy bunter]

the boyfulness is terrific!

[Marguerite.]

C'est deja une sensation forte de survoler la terre dans un petit avion, cela doit etre extraordinaire d'etre en prise directe avec l'atmosphere en "volant de ses propres ailes ".
A l'heure qu'il est, Yves Rossy doit s'etre lance au-dessus de la Manche.
Je pense a mon compatriote suisse pour qu'il reussisse son exploit. Et a vous Charles Bremner pour qui cela doit etre tres excitant de suivre Fusionman.
J'attends avec impatience votre blog de ce soir et les photos.
e

[Gilles]

He has done it ! Congratulations !
The video (National Geographic) can be seen on "Le Figaro" .

[stuart stow]

The real life iron man