First Attempts
An early human-powered aircraft was the Gerhardt Cycleplane, developed by W. Frederick Gerhardt at McCook Field in Dayton, Ohio in 1923. The aircraft had seven wings stacked nearly 15 feet (4.6 m) high. The pilot pedalled a bicycle gear that turned the propeller. In early tests the aircraft was towed into the air by an automobile, and released. With Gerhardt as the pilot, the Cycleplane was able to maintain stable, level flight for short durations. Its only human-powered takeoff was a short hop of 20 feet (6.1 m) with the craft rising 2 feet (0.61 m).
In 1934 Engelbert Zaschka from Germany completed a large human-powered aircraft, the Zaschka Human-Power Aircraft. On 11 July 1934 the Zaschka-HPA flew about 20 meters on the Berlin Tempelhof Airport; the HPA took off without assisted takeoff.
A craft called HV-1 Mufli (Muskelkraft-Flugzeug) built by Helmut Hässler and Franz Villinger (de) first flew on 30 August 1935: a distance of 235 metres at Halle an der Saale. 120 flights were made, the longest being 712 metres in 1937. However it was launched using a tensioned cable and so was not strictly human-powered.
A team of Enea Bossi (designer), Vittorio Bonomi (builder), and Emilio Casco (pilot) met a challenge by the Italian Government for a flight of one kilometre using their Pedaliante in March 1937. The aircraft apparently flew short distances fully under human power, but the distances were not significant enough to win the competition's prize. Furthermore there has been much dispute as to whether it ever took off under the pedal-power of the pilot alone, in particular because there is no record of official observation of it having done so. Some of the arguments for and against the validity of Bossi's claim to have done so are presented by Sherwin (1976). At the time the fully human-powered flights were deemed to be a result of the pilot's significant strength and endurance; and ultimately not attainable by a typical human. As with the HV-1 Mufli, additional attempts were therefore made using a catapult system. By being catapulted to a height of 9 metres (30 ft), the aircraft met the distance requirement of 1-kilometre (0.62 mi) but was declined the prize due to the launch method.
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