Celebrating 50 years of human-powered flight

Fifty years ago Derek Piggott became the first man since Icarus to take off and fly by his own unaided efforts.

Late in the afternoon of 9 November 1961, he climbed into the Southampton University Man Powered Aircraft (Sumpac), a fragile creation resembling a large model plane with a bicycle underneath. Pedalling furiously to drive both wheels and propeller, he felt Sumpac lifting off for a flight of 64 metres at a precarious 1.8 metres above the runway at Lasham airfield.

Though short and, at about 20mph, very slow, this was a historic flight: previous pedalling pilots had flown but needed help to get airborne.

The next half-century begins promisingly for the birdmen of the human-powered aircraft community. On Saturday Airglow, one of the hi-tech successors to Sumpac will, wind and weather permitting for these delicate craft need near-calm conditions, make a flight commemorating the British mini-aeronautical milestone at the same Hampshire airfield. The Royal Aeronautical Society will also hold a rally of human-powered aircraft in July 2012, just before the London Olympics, which enthusiasts hope will generate enough interest to eventually pedal the sport into future games.

Piggott, now 88, kept flying. "I've flown about 170 different types of glider and over 130 different types of powered planes," he recalls. He has been an instructor in aircraft from primary gliders used for training to Meteors, the first British jet fighter. He has held height records in gliders and flown the aircraft in the 1965 film comedy Those Magnificent Men in their Flying Machines.

He still flies both powered aircraft and gliders but, after a few more attempts during the following weeks in 1961 in which he achieved a flight of more than half a mile, has never taken to the saddle to race down the runway under his own steam.

His 9 November record stood for only a week, until it was overtaken by the professionals at manufacturers de Havilland whose "Puffin" puffed over a greater distance. The 24-metre-wingspan Sumpac was the creation of three students: David Williams, Anne Marsden (now his wife) and Alan Lassiere. "We were postgraduates in aeronautical engineering but spent our time on Sumpac," says Williams. "The professor helped: he turned a blind eye."

The graduates returned to their studies ("We took no more interest") and in the last half-century it has been mainly the Americans who have soared ahead. One human-powered aircraft has braved a Channel crossing. Another followed in the footsteps, or wingtips, of Daedalus, Icarus's father who escaped from King Minos's palace in Crete; flying a record-breaking 74 miles to the island of Santorini.

"At last a new generation of human-powered aircraft is emerging, lighter and more manoeuvrable," enthuses the Aerospace Professional, the magazine of the Royal Aeronautical Society. "No longer will pilots have to be super athletes. Any reasonably fit person should be able to take to the air under their own power."

Southampton University is again at the forefront of British human-powered aircraft. "We're running a fourth-year group project for 10 MA students," says the reasonably fit Alexander Forrester of the engineering department. "I'm the test pilot. I'm on a weightloss programme; I've bought some new batteries for the bathroom scales."

"Cycling in the air" could soon become much more accessible thanks to Fred To, one of the few people to have flown his own craft – an inflatable, 100-foot wingspan design which when deflated could be strapped to a car roof-rack. "I've done a short run in my aeroplane – a minute. To fly at even 8mph – my plane was quite slow – is a fantastic sensation."

He is now working on a design for a non-pneumatic kit which can be assembled and flown within a week without specialised skills – let alone a degree in aeronautical engineering.

But his ambition of seeing a human-powered aircraft competition in the Olympics, which would perhaps be the most intriguing sport since they began in 776BC, faces severe headwinds. "It's very hard to get the Olympic committee to accept the case for a new sport," says the former Olympics minister Tessa Jowell.

The concept might never take off. But they probably said that about Icarus.