Reuters News
Tuesday February 27 9:36 PM ET
Rio Carnival parades end with loud peace message
<<Grande Rio school’s legendary artistic director Joaozinho Trinta, who revolutionized the parades in the 1980s with his phantasmagoric ideas, again surprised the audience with ``rocket man’’ – a person in a shining spaceman’s suit who actually flew over the Sambadrome using a James Bond-style jet-pac.>>
So I want to fly around my neighbourhood too. Help me out, Teeming Millions!
Hi Arnold.
Here’s the first page I found with a Jet Pack article. http://www.the-strange.com/jetpack.html
Here’s another one: http://exn.ca/Stories/1999/05/12/55.cfm
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Anyone interested in having a rocket belt pack built (these are still top draw devices for shows and exhibitions) contact Juan Manuel (it is fair to say that Juan Manuel is an amazing individual) via his Mexico web site at …
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Unfortunately, “Archivo no encontrado (403)”.
I agree, these things are nifty. Too bad they only have an endurance of 30 seconds!
Thank you Johnny LA. I should have known that you would be able to dig up the answer to my question! The link you’ve provided makes these things sound pretty dangerous.
Does anyone know if the person at the carnaval in Rio was limited to 30 seconds of flying time? The picture in the LA Times showed him flying over a crowd of people, which seems to me to be a hard thing to do safely with only 30 seconds in which to take off and land.
You also might want to keep an eye on the Solotrek XFV.
Well, 30 seconds is a long time. Think of a typical commercial. I haven’t seen the L.A. Times photo, but I’ve seen some of the footage Bell produced. Their 1960s jet pack only had a 20 second endurance. But the footage was edited together nicely to make it seem longer. In any case, 20 seconds is plenty of time to take off, zoom over a crowd, and set down.
I’d seen the SoloTrek XFV before, but I haven’t really studied it. The first thing that comes to mind is, “If people can’t even drive without crashing into each other, imagine the carnage when they try to fly!”
Of course Superior People (like us Dopers!) would have no problem. 
The Solotrek isn’t a jet pack, it’s a helicopter. I know of several other competing designs for personal helicopters.
The last I heard, the rocket propelled packs still exist but cannot fly because nobody makes the propellant anymore. The last public appearance was in the LA Olympic opening ceremony, and that used up all the remaining fuel.
Well Hell, it’s just a petroleum distillate, isn’t it? What are it’s specs? I’m sure you can mod some up.
–Tim
About half way down, Johnny L.A.'s second link says, the fuel is hydrogen peroxide. Should be pretty easy to get …
Arjuna34
Right. The SoloTrek is a helicopter; but the concept is similar.
I believe hydrogen peroxide is the fuel for jet packs. (H2O2?) But it’s about 100 times stronger than what you’d buy at the local drug store. I read that during the X-15 program, new-guys were impressed by someone throwing a cup of hydrogen peroxide on a sage brush. It would burst into flames. Definitely not something you’d want your average schmo handling!
I’m sure I saw a jet pack being used in footage newer than the L.A. Olympics on The Learning Channel.
Strange. That’s the same thing that came to mind about my late husband during our honeymoon …
Beware the SoloTrek. Don’t give those guys a nickel of your money until you see lots of them flying for an extended period of time.
The SoloTrek has all the earmarks of an aviation scam. First, the developer, a man named Moshier, has a history of selling expensive ‘info-kits’ for new airplanes that are supposedly in development but never materialize. “Moshier Technologies” used to run half-page ads in magazines like KITPLANES and FLYING, with beautiful artists renderings (or computer renderings) of beautiful looking aircraft that were ‘about to go into flight test’. There have been at least a half a dozen of these, and I don’t know of a single one that ever left the ground. It turned out that the $35 info-kits WERE the company’s product.
A couple of things about the SoloTrek raise alarms. First, they have some sort of goofy ‘retinal scanner’ to prevent ‘unauthorized use’. I don’t suppose these guys have ever heard of KEYS? If this were a real aircraft, why in hell would they expend precious resources on this thing?
Second, they are advertising a computer-controlled flight management system which will FORCE the pilot to land by slowly throttling back the engine when fuel runs low. This doesn’t have a hope in hell of ever being certified, and sounds dangerous as hell. And again, it’s not necessary, so why expend resources for it, unless your real goal is just to make something sound as space-age as possible?
Third, they are advertising the Solo-trek as being 'incredibly safe, because the engine has two independent ignition and fuel systems. Therefore, it’s completely redundant! This is, to be charitable, misleading. The engine they are using has a poor reliability record when operated at high power levels (as it would be here). And while it’s true that the ignition system is redundant, it’s pretty much the only part of the aircraft that is, and there are a lot of complex parts there that, if they break, will kill you.
The rotors don’t have enough inertia to allow you to auto-rotate to a landing. Therefore, if your engine quits, you’ll die (they are trying to get around this by adding a ballistic parachute and their goofy computer, but this doesn’t solve the problem, since a vehicle like this will probably spend most of its time near the ground where the parachute is useless, and the computer doesn’t protect you against mechanical failure).
Then there’s those rotors hanging right over your head. If that thing so much as tips over, or hits a tree, or sucks in a bird, or does any number of bad things, those rotors are going to turn into GIANT BLADES OF SPINNING TWISTY DEATH.
Putting a Rotax 2-cycle engine in an airplane that will kill you if the engine fails is a prescription for lots of smoking holes in the ground. There was a ‘personal helicopter’ called the Mini-500 that tried to marry a Rotax 2-stroke with a high duty cycle and poor engine-off characteristics. The company went bankrupt, but only after something like 50% of all the helicopters they sold crashed soon after being built.
A lot of people who love aviation and believed in the dream of a radical personal aircraft died in their Mini-500’s. I’d hate to see a repeat of that.
But I probably don’t have to worry much, because the thing will probably never enter the market. Here’s a hint when looking at new aircraft: Real designers generally don’t try to make a profit selling you ‘technical manuals’ and info-kits. Burt Rutan doesn’t announce a new aircraft design until the prototype is flying. Some aircraft companies accept deposits, but the reputable ones won’t until they are far enough in engineering/prototyping that they are sure the aircraft will fly.
I went to SoloTrek’s website to gather more information, and it only took me 2 clicks before I was hit with a plug to purchase technical info. This dialed up the volume of the alarm bells that were already ringing in my head.
Man, I hate always being the downer when it comes to these threads, because I love aviation and no one would like to see a revolution in aircraft design more than I would. But ‘aircraft’ like the SoloTrek and the Moller Skycar divert precious resources away from real aircraft development, and their inevitable failures sour people on aviation and divert attention away from the real innovations going on. And in the worst cases, a lot of people die chasing the dream.
What a difference two years make! It looks like the SoloTrek XFV Exo-skeletor Flying Vehicle may be a reality after all: