LEGIT OR FAKE?

Well watch the dynamics. Lots of flapping and running. Then he just kind of leaps off the ground and climbs pretty dramatically, all with no increase in flapping frequency. Then he gets to the top of the climb, kind of hovers, without flapping. Birds flap like crazy when they do this. The final item, look at the trailing edges of the wing. They kind of flutter in the breeze. The wing never appears loaded like a parawing or hang glider wing.

However, if it works, I want one. Always on the hunt for a new way to kill myself.

Fake...

I'm not sure of the actual number, but the human body is only able to put out roughly 1 HP for a short while. That is while pedaling, using the actual strong muscles in you body (the legs), not the little pretend chest muscles on that guy. The pedal powered flying machines never could climb like that, and propeller propulsion is more efficient than ornithopter propulsion.

My two bits...

Apparently, if it's real, it's not just human powered, there is a battery pack and some mechanics to help drive the wings.

Fake: http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/20...rd-wings-hoax/

I didn't see any obvious product placement, but this fits the profile for a viral marketing campaign of some sort.

Amazing, though, that hundreds of years after DaVinci, this idea still stirs in a lot of us the same hopes and dreams he must have had. Makes the wingsuit thing even cooler to me--those guys have found a way to fly on their own without using any video editing!

wings look mighty small compared to my old hang glider...

CGI experts at Industrial Light and Magic explain why this video is certainly a fake: http://gizmodo.com/5895235/cgi-experts- ... an-is-fake

We are getting there. All that's missing is mechanical bird shit.

Guy just came clean, its fake.
http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2012/03/birdman-admits-hoax/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+wired%2Findex+%28Wired%3A+Index+3+%28Top+Stories+2%29%29

Fake or no, it's pretty neat. There's a reason the breast is the largest muscle on most birds. Humans just ain't got the build. The guy has a pretty neat website: http://humanbirdwings.net/

On the site is a video of the flapping mechanism. Quite a lot of work for a fake, but it is always amusing to see the effort a faker will expend. Reminds me of some of the fake perpetual motion machines that were "invented" back in the late 1800s and early 1900s.

tom