A flying bicycle sounds like a cartoon. It is not. Three real machines — built in 1979, 2009, and 2013 — have already carried the humble bicycle into the sky, and now a new book turns their secrets into a step-by-step build that an ordinary person can follow.
Every child who ever coasted down a hill, legs out, wind in the face, has had the same thought: what if I just kept going — up? For most of us the thought ends at the bottom of the hill. For a handful of builders, it became the project of a lifetime. Their machines were not science fiction. They were bicycles — with wings, engines, and extraordinary patience.
Here are the three that proved it.
Machine 1: The Gossamer Albatross (1979) — Legs Alone Across the Sea
In 1979, racing cyclist Bryan Allen pedalled the Gossamer Albatross across the English Channel — 35.8 km (22 miles) of open sea — using nothing but his own legs.
The numbers sound impossible until you see the trick:
- Wingspan: 29.8 m (98 ft) — wider than a basketball court is long
- Total weight: just 32 kg (71 lb) — lighter than its pilot
- Power needed: about 0.4 horsepower — the output of one trained cyclist
The lesson of the Albatross is the first law of all light flight: size and lightness beat power. A giant wing, flown slowly, can lift a person on the strength of a bicycle ride.
Machine 2: The F-Bike (2013) — The Bicycle That Rose Straight Up
In 2013, engineers in Prague (Duratec, Technodat and Evektor) bolted six electric propellers to a bicycle frame and lifted it straight off the ground — the F-bike.
- Power: about 47 kW of battery-fed motors
- Flight time: 3–5 minutes — glorious, and brutally short
- It carried a dummy rider only — the team honestly admitted batteries were not yet good enough for a human
The F-bike is the multirotor bicycle: the easiest way to leave the ground (straight up, no runway) and the hardest way to stay there. Batteries store roughly one-tenth the energy of petrol per kilogram — and physics always collects its bill.
Machine 3: The Paravelo (2013) — The One You Could Actually Own
Also in 2013, London designers John Foden and Yannick Read built the Paravelo: an ordinary-looking roadster bicycle that tows a small trailer carrying a 249cc paramotor engine and a paraglider wing.
- Road speed: 24 km/h (15 mph) — it rides like a normal bicycle
- Air speed: 40 km/h (25 mph), for up to 3 hours at a time
- Range: about 120 km (75 miles); ceiling around 1,220 m (4,000 ft)
- The whole machine weighed about 34 kg (75 lb) — and folded to fit in a car
And it was not alone: in 2009, John Carver's Flyke — a wheeled paramotor machine — flew the entire length of Britain, refuelling every two hours. Wheels + wing + engine is not a stunt. It is a travelling machine.
So Which Flying Bicycle Can a Normal Person Build?
That is exactly the question answered by the new book "Build Your Own Flying Bicycle" by Atlas Kane — the first how-to book ever written on this subject (there is no other like it), now live.
Written in plain, simple words for a reader who has never held a spanner, with 32 pictures — every part and every assembly step shown — the 83-page book covers:
✅ How flight really works — lift, weight, thrust and drag, explained with bicycle-simple analogies
✅ The 3 real ways compared honestly — cost, flight time, skill and difficulty, side by side
✅ The MAIN BUILD: the Paramotor Roadster, step by step — parts list with prices, a fabricator's sheet with measurements and a cutting list, the tow-trailer build, assembly Steps 1–12, the hang test, and ground handling
✅ The Honest Chapter — law, safety and training, including the book's golden rule: no training, no flying — ever
✅ The electric multirotor build — simple battery math, a motor map, wiring order, and a tethered test rig
✅ The human-powered wing — the real sizing math behind the Albatross and AeroVelo's Atlas helicopter
✅ Ground school — the progressive ladder from first engine runs to first flights, with hard go/no-go weather rules
✅ Full cost tables (careful used-gear route: roughly $8,000–$13,500 all-in, training included), troubleshooting, maintenance routines, checklists, and a flight log
The book was read cover-to-cover from a total beginner's chair — twice — and every gap a first-time builder would hit (missing measurements, unexplained adjustments, mismatched prices) was found and repaired before publication. What remains is a build a determined beginner can genuinely finish, with one optional hour of a welder's help.
Get the Book
Build Your Own Flying Bicycle — Atlas Kane · 83 pages · $12.99
👉 Buy it here: https://www.xinxii.com/sports-fitness-469/sports-a%C3%A9riens-484?product_id=538316
The Wright brothers were bicycle mechanics. When they wanted to understand flight, they built wings onto what they knew — and the bicycle has been quietly teaching people to fly ever since. Your turn.
