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SUMPAC - Human Powered Airplane
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This model is "in development".

SUMPAC stands for Southampton University Man Powered AirCraft.  It was the first human powered aircraft to verifiably take off on level ground under human power alone, on November 9, 1961, piloted by Derek Piggott, for a flight of 64 meters.  The project was started by a group of Southampton University students, Anne Marsden, Alan Lassiere and David Williams, with additional team members soon added consisting of Raymond Hale, Martin Lowson, Peter Musgrove and Tony Pretlove.  They were inspired to create the airplane by the Kremer Prize, announced in early 1960 and administered by the Royal Aircraft Society, for the first flight by a human powered airplane around a figure 8 circuit between two turn markers separated by a half mile, with a minimum height at the start and end of the course of 10 feet above the ground.

In order to have a chance at the prize, and a chance to fly at all, the aircraft had to be made incredibly light with a large wingspan.  Constructed primarily of spruce and balsa covered with doped parachute silk, and with an aluminum fuselage subframe and bicycle wheel landing gear, the airplane weighed 124 pounds (56 kg) empty and was designed to take 302 Watts to fly with a 140 lb ( 63.5 kg) pilot.  It had a wingspan of 80 feet (24.4 m), and a wing area of 300 square feet (27.9 square meters).

The airplane completed over 40 flights in its 2 year career, the longest of which was about 650 meters.  Over the course of testing, it accomplished a few turns of up to 80 degrees, but turning proved difficult and it was never able to complete the Kremer course*.  It had one major crash and was rebuilt as the "SUMPAC Mark II", with a modified, larger tail, new fuselage subframe, and re-covering with Melinex (aka "Mylar"), and was successfully flown with these changes.  After a second serious crash, it was repaired but retired to a museum.  It is the SUMPAC Mark II which is modeled and displayed in FlightGear.  The graphics model was originally created in Cinema 4D and built by Industrial Art Studios, www.ind-art.co.uk, (contact: Roger Full).  It was commissioned in 2016 by Alan Lassiere, one of the original SUMPAC principals.  

(*Dozens of human powered airplanes were built in the following years, and turning proved difficult for all of them -- the Kremer prize was not won until 1977 by the Gossamer Condor -- by then the prize had grown from 5,000 GBP to 50,000 GBP (equivalent to about 300,000 GBP or $400,000 USD in current 2019 dollars.)

Feedback and contributions to the model are welcome.
