By Stu Smith

I found an interesting website on a man-powered ornithopter project in Canada near Toronto and they are flying out of a small gliding club strip, at the Great Lakes Gliding Club.

The project is being lead by engineers from the University of Toronto. This group made the first successful engine powered manned ornithopter flight in 2006, see below.

Now to do the same with only human power!

The comments below come from the airfield owner, Mike Ronan, who is hosting the project at the Great Lakes Gliding Club.

"Nov 7th 2009
We have been fairly busy with a very important project that is taking place on our field; the world's first human-powered ornithopter has been build and flown at our field.
Suitable weeks will not be available to fly in the balance of this season, so we will have to wait until next spring when she will be worked upon and fitted with some better ideas, so this is it for now.
There have been 21 successful flights, all under tow to get it going, followed by a short period of gliding with some flapping to keep it moving, normally 200 - 300 meters after disconnection from the tow line.
There were some flights with up to 3 flaps of the wings. It really looks like a huge condor coming at you.
There were some rather "interesting" landings as controllability problems were sorted out.
A couple of landings were in the rough.
Some glitches with the controls (fly-by-wire) but each launch got better than the previous."

Find out more at their website: http://www.hpoproject.ca/?q=content/a-brief-history-human-powered-aviation-and-ornithopters

Great Lakes Gliding Club website: http://www.greatlakesgliding.com

2006 powered manned ornithopter flight, this is impressive!