Gazette.Net: Record-setting helicopter on display at College Park museum


ADVERTISEMENT


ADVERTISEMENT


ADVERTISEMENT


RECENTLY POSTED JOBS



FEATURED JOBS


Loading...


Share on Facebook
Share on Twitter
Delicious
E-mail this article
Leave a Comment
Print this Article
advertisement

The University of Maryland, College Park’s record-setting human-powered helicopter, dubbed Gamera, will be on display for the rest of the year at the College Park Aviation Museum.

Visitors to the museum, located at 1985 Corporal Frank Scott Drive in College Park, can see up-close how Gamera works, and read about how the craft — built by about 50 students from the university’s A. James Clark School of Engineering — set an 11.4-second record in flight duration for a human-powered helicopter and flight duration with a female pilot in July 2011.

The school is now working on a second Gamera helicopter, which school officials say will be lighter and more efficient than the first, in pursuit of the $250,000 Sikorsky Prize. To win the prize, the team must build a human-powered helicopter that hovers for 60 seconds, reaching a height of three meters. Since its establishment by the American Helicopter Society in 1980, no one has won the prize.