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Cheap Flight

A friend used to have an alarm clock in a baseball. Only cost about $9.99 and once he through it through the bedroom window clear into his neighbour's lot, where their dog savaged it.

Hey- it was a machine and it flew. You did ask.
 
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bewareofdogmas: what are the cheapest flying machines?
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<table><tr><td>
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</td><td valign="top">If you are asking about a machine that you can get in and fly, one that has an engine to takeoff and maintain level flight (i.e. not a glider), then my best guess is a single seat paraplane or something similar.



Image courtesy of
http://www.paraventure.com/faq.html</td></tr></table>
 
bewareofdogmas: I forget the name of it, its a 30,000+- helicopter It was on Tomorrow's World.
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Since you can't buy one of those today at any price, what exactly is your question? You can buy a new paraplane today for $8,000 and you can buy a previously owned Cessna for $20,000.
 
It would have to be a man-carrying kite. Pretty easy to build, but not the safest form of transport.
 
Soapy Sam: It would have to be a man-carrying kite. Pretty easy to build, but not the safest form of transport.
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You mean like one of these?

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image courtesy of http://www.kemmeriesaviation.com

This kind of craft are only slightly more expensive than paraplane style aircraft. In fact most Part 103 ultralights are well under $20,000.
 
Since you can't buy one of those today at any price, what exactly is your question?-Xouper



You CAN buy them now for about $30,000. I forget what its called.
Powered Para-gliders are the cheapest way to fly that I've found.
 
bewareofdogmas: You CAN buy them now for about $30,000. I forget what its called.
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If you are referring to the GEN H4, which was recently on Tomorrow's World, then where exactly can someone buy one today?

According to the manufacturer's FAQ, which is three years out of date, it's not yet available for purchase.

In fact, I'm having trouble finding any current information about this vehicle, which is not a good sign, considering the history of broken promises by some in the kit aircraft market.
 
xouper said:
If you are referring to the GEN H4, which was recently on Tomorrow's World, then where exactly can someone buy one today?
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There was this one:
http://www.cnn.com/2002/TECH/ptech/02/06/solotrek.jetpack/

Which I think I've seen on sale for around $1,000,000, but the small print said that it would be disabled and the purchaser would have to promise not to try and fly it for liability reasons.
 
bewareofdogmas said:
what are the cheapest flying machines?
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The cheapest thing I know of would be the Doodlebug and/or the Mosquito which use a small 2-stroke internal combustion engine to provide power for hang-gliders.

You can get more data for both at the BlueSky hang-gliding school in Virginia.

http://www.jdperk.com/bluesky/
 
Xouper- No, the motorised hang glider in your picture is much more sophisticated than what I had in mind. I really meant a kite. They were used byartillery spotters in WW1. Bamboo and cotton technology. Often two or three would be flown above each other, using the first (small) kite to get the next (larger) kite airborne. The third actually carried a man. They were tethered, but still flew. The mortality rate must have been high.
 
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