Jesse made a short visit to the Icarus Cup 2024. The competition was held at the large runway of Manston, just like last year. Likely this will be the last year at Manston, as this former RAF airbase will be redeveloped into a cargo airfield.
Only 3 HPAs were present: Aerocycle301, Aerocycle302, and Lazarus. This year it was not much of a competition, but we just did some nice flying. John Edgley generously offered Aerocycle301 for many flights by many people. Aerocycle302 was kept as the real competition aircraft, even though only the two strongest cyclists flew it, just like last year. Jesse also got to fly Aerocycle301 again. After a long, cold morning of waiting till many novice pilots made some ground loops and first flights, he finally got to fly for half a minute. If only he could bring his own HPA to the Icarus Cup!
Lazarus by SUHPA had a new drivetrain concept. It remains a mystery why they chose this concept, but it was an interesting engineering experiment. Some initial testing trouble occurred, followed by hasty mail deliveries of replacement parts. But they managed to fix it in time, for some short flights with this new drivetrain!
Strath HPA was also present again, working on their first design but helping out with ground handling and some flying of Aerocycle301.
We had expected some more HPAs, however: for unknown reasons, Betterfly and Airglow again did not show up. LeDash would like to come over from France, but the customs hassle was so large the previous year (hours and hours of delay for no real reason), that they did not join this year. Max was too busy with his work to repair Disco Volante. Maybe a next time!
Charles, however, surprised everyone by showing up with an EPA: electric powered aircraft. Originally meant as a small and fast HPA, this experimental aircraft was given electric propulsion because of the high power requirement. The different construction techniques proved to work just fine, and the EPA did many taxi trials and ground runs. The design fits the sub-70-kg aircraft class in the UK, where microlight aviation innovation is happening. This class does not exist in the Netherlands.
The yearly BHPFC change of the board took place during the AGM. We also had a good RAeS Human Powered Flight Specialty Group meeting.
Here is an overview of the event with photos in random order!

To be continued.



























