The ultimate strap-on: Seattle's Hoppi-Copter personal flying machine. You probably know how this turned out.

By Jack Brummet
All This Is That Technology Editor


click to enlarge - Source: Washington State Archives. General Photograph Collection. Photographer: unknown. This photo was taken sometime in 1950. It resides in Box 6 of the Washington State Digital Archives. The man in the photo is wearing a Hoppi-Coptor, a personal helicopter device developed by Seattle's Horace Pentecost. Ca. 1950. Jack note: this photo may very well be of Horace Pentecost himself.

In the mid-40's and early 50's, a Seattle company--Hoppi-copter--formed by Horace Pentecost, worked to develop a strap-on personal helicopter. The Pentecost Hoppi-Copter was a personal helicopter pack designed to be fastened to an infantryman's back and allow him to work around objective obstacles...you know, mountains, jungles, canyons, forest fires and such.

They made their first test flights in 1945, but as is true of so many flying schemes, landing was a sticky wicket. Landing shock problems proved brutal. In the research I did, there were hints that if you landed wrong, the rotors broke off to became high speed, razor-like shrapnel.

In the late 1940's, Pentecost produced a second, slightly saner version with a seat and landing gear. Two of these were sold or loaned in 1948 to the British Ministry of Supply for experimental flights. Another company bought the patents in 1954 and created a Hoppi-Copter with rotor blade-mounted pulse jets. From the few snippets of information that can be found, it sounds like these versions didn't fare much better.



The HOPPI-COPTER • rear view

According to literature from Pentecost Hoppi-copter, the Hoppi-Copter had a 45 horsepower engine: the rotor had a diameter of 18 feet, and empty, the 'copter weighed 225 pounds and could fly with a gross weight of 450 pounds. It had a maximum speed of 60 m.p.h. and a cruising speed of 45 m.p.h. It's range was about 150 miles. The facts and figures in the Time Magazine article, below, do not square with the information in the company's press releases and brochures...I can't tell which specifications are correct.


The second version of the Hoppi-copter, with seat and landing gear.

From Time Magazine, April 7th, 1947:

Ever since Icarus, and in spite of what happened to him, men have dreamed of strapping wings on themselves and taking off like the birds. Airplanes have never completely satisfied this desire. The plane itself does the flying; the man only rides and steers. Gliders are only half the ticket.

Last week the ancient dream showed headline-hitting signs of coming true. At a Philadelphia meeting of the American Helicopter Society, Horace T. Pentecost told about the "Hoppi-copter" (see cut), which he has been developing in Seattle. It is a helicopter* stripped to essentials: little more than a seat, landing wheels and two horizontal rotors revolving in opposite directions. The power source is a 35 h.p. engine with two opposed cylinders like an outboard motor. According to Mr. Pentecost, "the required blade adjustments to render typical three dimensional helicopter flight have been coordinated into a single control handle placed conveniently in front of the operator."

Total weight (not counting Mr. Pentecost): 173 Ibs. The Hoppi-copter should "retail for little more than the better modern motorcycle." Helicopter experts would be more enthusiastic if they had seen it flying, but no performance records have been made available. But the designers have incorporated one important safety feature. Icarus made the mistake of flying too near the sun, which melted the wax that held his wings together. The Hoppi-copter's announced ceiling is a modest 12,000 ft.

* The Icarus apparatus was presumably not a helicopter with revolving wing surfaces but an ornithopter, with flapping wings. [Ed's note: The flights of Icarus and Daedalus were not successful; as for the Hoppi-copter, we have found no data that any of its test flights were actually fatal].

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White House folds on health care public option

By Pablo Fanque.
All This Is That National Affairs Editor



The White House let it be known today they are throwing in the towel on "the public option" in their health care "reform" plan. Between the hysteria on the right and the insanity of the town halls, they just couldn't pull it off. They hinted a possible compromise with Republicans might include health insurance cooperatives. You can read an AP story on the pullback here.

Change.
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Mount Rainier: Beauty and terror

Source: Washington State Archives. State Library Photograph Collection. Photo by L.D. Lindsley - click to enlarge

I have two friends climbing Mount Rainier this weekend. I recently read the best book I'd ever read about it... The Measure of a Mountain: Beauty and Terror on Mount Rainier by Bruce Barcott. He focused on climbing, the native folklore about the mountain, the animals and insects, the history, including a detailed account various expeditions, and of the army plane crash in the 40s that left dozens of bodies buried in the Tacoma Glacier.

If you are fascinated by Mt. Rainier--and it's hard not to be in Seattle, when its massive presence looms over us every day ("the mountain's out today!")--this is a great book to start with. What makes Barcott's book so engrossing is that he digs in to all aspects of the mountain. And tells his personal story of climbing the mountain, and how when he finally summited, he didn't feel much at all. Except anxious. He does a great job describing both the danger and the beauty.


click to enlarge - Rainier from the northwest

The mountain is arguably the single most impressive mountain in the lower 48. It's only the 5th tallest mountain-- a few feet lower than California's Mt. Whitney (14,494'/4418m) and also a few feet shorter than some of the Sawatch Range peaks in Colorado. It is second to Shasta in total volume for a single peak, and only nearby Mount Baker has more glacial ice. In terms of it's high elevation, massive bulk, and 30 glaciers, Mt. Rainier reigns supreme. And it is only 40 miles to the sea level shores of Puget Sound. Because it is so big, and relatively alone, it dominates the landscape, and can be seen from Oregon to Canada.

Climbing Mt. Rainier, by its easiest route, requires you to ascend 9,000 vertical feet! This is actually the same distance as the climb from advance base camp in the Western Cwm to the top of Mt. Everest. Of course, the air is considerably thicker...
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John "Douchebag" Edwards DNA matched to baby mama Rielle Hunter

By Pablo Fanque

All This Is That National Affairs Editor

You won't be hearing much from John Edwards anymore. He is now the next gen's Gary Hart, a guy who threw away national office by "stepping out" on his wife. He could have been Attorney General or VP. He could have even mounted a challenge to Obama.

To make matters worse, he has lied about the paternity for years now, even when it was certain to come out. Good riddance, John. I can't believe I ever thought you were the guy. When did you finally break down and tell Elizabeth?

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The Return of Squeaky Fromme: Attempted Presidential Assassin and top Charles Manson lieutenant leaves prison...

By Jack Brummet
All This Is That Law and Justice Editor

This is kind of a mindf***er! Who'd have ever though Lynnette "Squeaky" Fromme would see the light of day again? I remember the day she tried to shoot President Ford. The only thing that stopped her from killing him was a secret service agent who somehow managed to jam his thumb in front of the the hammer of the gun. And I might add, we came one thumb away from President Nelson Rockefeller. And now she is out. She had earlier turned down parole, but took one this time around.


Gerald Ford with Bill Clinton

Fromme was Charlie Manson's head honcho when he sent his followers on a two-day killing spree in 1969, in which eight people were killed, including actress Sharon Tate (and her unborn baby). The killings were allegedly done to trigger a race war. Fromme did not actually participate in the murders 40 years ago in Los Angeles. She avoided prison and was able to take a shot at Gerald Ford a few years later.



Manson and five others did go to prison for life. But then, Squeaky was also to sent to prison for life. Charles Manson is in the California State Prison at Corcoran and will again be eligible for three years from now. Charles is now 74 and Squeaky is 60.
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Poem: Robot Wars

The bad news for us:
The loss of one member
Is inconsequential--
Just a millisecond diversion
In their inexorable march.
A platoon of robots,
A company of robots
Stepping over broken robots.
A regiment of robots,
A division of robots
Executing lines of code.
A corps of robots,
An army of robots--
Programmed to make it all come down
By rogue homo sapiens--
March straight ahead,
Utterly indifferent to the fate
Of their brothers and sisters in arms
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An amazing view of Ballard, Seattle, Wash., with a frieze of Olympic Mountains

click on Ballard to enlarge, Photo by Jack Johnson. Source: Washington State Archives.
General Photograph Collection. Used with permission.

A photograph of my neighborhood in Seattle (Ballard) in 1960, nearly fifty years ago. I love the perspective--and no, the Olympic Mountains do not quite loom over us like that! We can see them, but from our promontory from Crown Hill/North Beach, they seem further in the distance, far less foreboding, but breath-taking still, and humbling in the way mountains always are.
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The Greys claim Wyoming as new homeland

click to enlarge

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Video: "the 100 best movie lines in 200 seconds"

OK. These are probably not the 100 best movie lines (although quite a few of them are), but they're mostly memorable, and do cover a lot of territory. It's worth a few to see some of those old cherished nuggets...

Video and poem: Kill my landlord --> Eddie Murphy reads his character Tyrone Green's prison poem Images

You may or not remember this just bent enough for me Eddie Murphy sketch from SNL --it's hard to believe he was on the show for--what?--five years. I did get to see Eddie Murphy on the show in Studio 8H at a rehearsal Saturday afternoon (I had connections...thank you Cheryl [1]).

Images

by Tyrone Greene

Dark and lonely on the summer night.
Kill my landlord, kill my landlord.
Watchdog barking - Do he bite?
Kill my landlord, kill my landlord.
Slip in his window,
Break his neck!
Then his house
I start to wreck!
Got no reason --
What the heck!
Kill my landlord, kill my landlord.
C-I-L-L ...
My land - lord ...
Def!




[1] Our friend Cheryl Hardwick was the music director of the shows for many years, and played piano in the band. She and Pinky were the catalyst for meeting all sorts of interesting people witnessing a lot of crazy events and situations in the late 70s/esarly 80s. I was introduced to her by her partner, Pinky Rawsthorne, a co-worker of mine, and one of the funniest, and wisest persons I ever met in my life. We met or hung out at various times with all sorts of people in celeb and semi-celeb world: Larraine Newman, Garrett Morris, Gilda Radner, Bill Murray, Bob Cranshaw--the legendary jazzman (who we met a few times at her apartment, but the first time was when he was playing with Woody Shaw at a club in the East Village --but it was close to Broadway...I can't remember if the E. Village technically ends at 3rd or 4th or Broadway?); Lorna Luft; Maria Manville; Howard Shore; and Belushi and Ackroyd (I met Belushi once in the lobby of 30 Rock, when Cheryl came down to let me in...when he walked away, he stiff-armed a bunch of excited-looking kids who wanted to say hi. He looked wrecked--either recovering from a long, brutal night or working on the next one. Within a year or year and a half, he died in Hollywood); sometime not long after that, Cheryl took me downtown (we both lived on the Upper West Side) to the Blues Brothers Bar, a private dive owned/run by Belushi and Ackroyd. That was pretty interesting, mostly for the insane levels of Bolivian Marching Powder that were being consumed at any given moment. She played at a poetry reading Keelin, Nick,. Kevin, Pegeen, and I had in a theatre in Chelsea She brought some upwardly mobile dapper New Yorker poet (but I forget who!), and also got Gerald Stern to attend (he was just getting really hot). At a party at her place, for the publication of Gerald Stern's book The Red Coal, I got to meet Isaac Bashevis Singer (who had recently won the Nobel Prize for Literature, and a passel of NY literary celebs). It was pretty crazy stuff for a cracker kid from a farm town...
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Could Angela Merkel's breasts tilt the German elections?

The poster says "we have more to offer"

With seven weeks to go until the German elections, billboards of Chancellor Angela Merkel in a low-cut dress (alongside her own cleavage shot) have been put up by by the campaign of Vera Lengsfeld. Lengsfeld is from Merkel's own CDU party, and is engaged in a long-shot race in a left-wing district of Berlin. Merkel did not OK the posters...


President Bush's famous, and unwanted massage

The posters show photographs of each politician in dresses showing mondo cleavage and carry the slogan"We have more to offer."

Lengsfeld, a former East German dissident, said she had not cleared the picture beforehand with Merkel. I suppose if Lengsfeld gets even more desperate, she could break out the infamous shot of Merkel changing into her bathing suit on a beach:


Chancellor Merkel's peekaboo moment
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Why you and your boss should maybe not be Facebook friends...

click to enlarge

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