Photograph:
The surviving tail section of the Todhunter Skycyle held at the Power House Museum in Sydney (Power House Museum)
Country of origin:
Australia
Description:
Single-seat man-powered light aircraft
Power Plant:
Nil
Specifications:
- TBA
History:
In 1967 brothers Reginald and Ernest Todhunter, who at the time lived at Condell Park, a western Sydney suburb, commenced the design of a man-powered aircraft to enter the worldwide competition announced by Henry Kremer, a British Industrialist, a sum of $75,000 being offered for the first group to build and fly a human-powered aircraft over a figure-of-eight course covering a distance of 1.6 km (1 mile), the course to include a 3.048 m (10 ft) pole that the aircraft had to fly over at the beginning and conclusion of the flight.
Constructed from 1967 to 1976, tests were commenced in 1976 but, following damage caused during early testing, some re-design had to take place before an attempt was made on the course. In the meantime, on 23 August 1977, the course was completed by the Gossamer Condor designed by Dr Paul B MacCready and the prize was awarded, other attempts at winning the pricze becoming irrelevant. Kremer later offered a prize of $15,000 to the first non-American to complete the course but the Todhunter brothers decided not to continue with the project so it was shelved.
Reginald Todhunter was well known in the aviation world in Australia, being involved in a number of glider projects, including the Todhunter Blue Wren, which was a self-launched glider which survives in New Zealand, and a Flying Plank which has also survived and has been placed in the collection of aircraft at the Sydney Power House Museum.
The Todhunter Skycycle (which has no relationship to the Skycycle built in Burnie, Tasmania) was a pedal-powered full-size aircraft. It comprised a wing of canard layout and was constructed of sugar-pine, balsa, plywood, styrene foam, spruce, with dural bolts and some aircraft aluminium fittings. The skin was of plastic film. There was a small foreplane, parallel chord mainplane and a single fixed fin carrying a 2.74 m (9 ft) diameter propeller in the pusher configuration.
The aircraft, in a damaged state, and some 17 drawings in pencil on various types of paper and tracing paper relating to the design of the aircraft, have survived and are held by the Sydney Power House Museum. An article on the development of the aircraft appeared in the Australian magazine Aircraft in November 1977.