Flying scooter avoids traffic jams

Press, Volume CXI, Issue 32775, 27 November 1971, Page 12

Flying scooter avoids traffic jams

(By

DAVID LE ROI)

Any car driver who has ever been stuck in a long line of stationary and slow-moving vehicles must at some time have wished he could fly out of the queue and come down on the first clear stretch of road ahead.

A young American inventor is turning this dream into road-worthy reality, with a flying scooter. It can be driven like a car or flown like a helicopter, and is now undergoing tests in actual road-traffic conditions. The flying scooter has three wheels, with the engine behind the driver’s seat. The engine is connected through gearing to the single roadwheel at the rear and to a two-bladed helicopter rotor mounted on a spindle above the driver’s head. “Jumping the queue” When the flying scooter is being driven along the road, the gearing to the rotor is disconnected and the engine transmits its power to the

road wheel. The vehicle is then virtually a car. It has clutch and brake pedals, a gear lever and handlebars to steer it.

The engine, which resembles a motor-cycle’s, develops about 30 h.p. and gives a road speed of up to 50 m.p.h. It does about 24 miles to the gallon. The driver who decides to “jump the queue” does so by pushing the gear lever straight forward. A special locking device, controlled by a small foot pedal, prevents the lever from operating any of the road gears to the engine. Immediately the lever is pushed forward, the engine is disconnected from the road wheels and its power is transferred to the rotor blades. These start revolving and within a minute build up enough speed to lift the vehicle off the ground. When the flying scooter reaches a height of about 100 feet it flies forward at a speed of 50 m.pJi. Forward flight, turning to right or to left and the height at which the “heli-scooter” files are controlled by the column on which the handlebars are

mounted. This column is used in the same way as the joystick on old-fashioned aeroplanes. Spotting a clear stretch of road, the pilot lands, switches the engine from the rotor to the road wheel, and so changes from pilot back to motorist. I Many problems The flying scooter weighs 6001 b and can carry someone weighing 16 stone. To save weight, the vehicle is built of special nickel and aluminium alloys. Although the flying scooter has proved its vehicular efficiency on the road and up there, a lot of problems will have to be solved before we all have one parked in the , drive. One of the chief problems is congestion, the very thing that the flying scooter has, been built to solve. But this, time the congestion will be-, in the air. Without some form of air traffic control, there might be so many heli-scooters flying about that it will be safer and quicker to be back on earth.