Backpack helicopter

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Artist's depiction of a helibackpack with counter-rotating twin rotors

A backpack helicopter is a helicopter motor and rotor and controls assembly that can be strapped to a person's back, so that he can walk about on the ground wearing it, and can use it to fly. Its harness, like a parachute harness, should have a strap between the legs, so that the pilot does not fall out of the harness during flight.

Related are devices like a backpack helicopter which also include a seat and leg supports and are actually very small open-topped ordinary helicopters.

Several inventors have tried to make backpack helicopters, with mixed results.

In theory, a helicopter would be more efficient than a rocket/jet pack, possessing a greater specific impulse, and being more suited to hovering due to the smaller velocities of the propelled gases.

1 Examples
2 Ducted Fan
3 In Popular Culture
4 Toy versions
5 See also

[edit] Examples

Pure backpacks:-

http://english.pravda.ru/main/2002/06/11/30172.html describes a Russian backpack helicopter.
The Heliofly was a make which was designed in Germany in 1941 onwards. See [1] and [2].
Pentecost HX-1 Hoppi-Copter
Rhyme (made in Japan)

With a seat:-

SoloTrek XFV (Exo-skeletal Flying Vehicle).
See http://www.vortechonline.com for various models which have seats. They formerly also made a pure backpack model with two very long rotor blades driven by a little propane-powered jet motor at the end of each blade.
GenH4

[edit] Ducted Fan

Ducted fan design may be used in some models to increase upward thrust. This is achieved by mounting a cylindrical duct around the propellers which reduces the loss of thrust from the tips of the propellers.

[edit] In Popular Culture

Backpack helicopters occur sometimes in fiction. All real backpack helicopters are flown with its pilot's body vertical, but there are some in fiction (for example, in Dan Dare comics and the video game H.E.R.O.) which are flown with its pilot's body horizontal.

Backpack helicoptors are considered to be relatively popular gadget. There has been multiple appearances in spy films such as in the 2003 film, Agent Cody Banks.