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For more than 50 years, the media have been promising us the personal flight revolution; by 2000 we'd all be getting around in flying cars, cruising down the skyway then touching down, driving home and unloading the shopping. Sadly, most of us are still stuck down here in traffic, but one maverick aviator has successfully taken personal flight into his own hands with a road-registered, high-safety flying motorcycle.
Larry Neal had been selling kit gyroplanes through The Butterfly LLC company for several years - these small, light aircraft take off and land in a very small area, and the unpowered top rotor is even more effective than a parachute in power-loss situations, making them an extremely safe flying option.
Transporting the craft around after landing, however, was always a nuisance. The large rotors required time-consuming disassembly in order to be transported on a trailer, relegating the rotorplanes to hobby status rather than a practical form of transport.
So Neal set about inventing and patenting a foldable rotor system, a rear wheel suspension lowering unit for soft landings, and a transmission that can be switched between driving the rear rotor of the plane, and driving the rear wheels. The result: the Super Sky Cycle, a genuine, registered flying motorcycle.
“The problem with flying cars in the past was what to do with the wings once you were on the ground,†said Neal. “With a “fly-drive†gyroplane, just fold the rotor blades and drive on down the road.â€
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