Welcome to the Los Altos Human Powered Airplane section. Since its
inception in 1997, the Los Altos Human Powered Airplane (HPA)
project, also known as the Grasshopper, has been one of the longest
and most challenging projects undertaken by the students of the
Engineering Technology class. More information on the Los Altos
Human Powered Airplane can be found in its
History section. Photos of the Human Powered Airplane can be
found in the
LAHPA Gallery on the Photo Galleries page.
In June of 2000 after four years of work, the student team was very
close to completing the airplane, and plan to attempt to fly it over
spring break in late April. However, in order to fly the plane, the
team needed to find an insurance carrier to insure the plane so that
they could reserve a hangar at March Air Force Base in Riverside.
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“Without insurance, the team was doomed to graduate
without a chance to fly Grasshopper. On the last week of
school, in a desperate attempt, the team moved Grasshopper
to the gym on Friday afternoon. By midnight, she was
assembled. With all the cabling tensioned, the skin tight,
and the weight and balance checked. At 2 AM disassembly was
started. At 5 AM she was moved to the football field and
reassembly started. At 2 PM with all cables in place,
Grasshopper was moved to a take-off position (two sheets of
plywood) after several prop adjustments and chains to be
tensioned. Grasshopper was ready for flight. A breeze was
blowing and two of the gravity cables snapped. A decision
was made to go for broke. With the team holding the wing
sections up with brooms, the flight began. The pilot,
Charlies Kim, started cranking hard as Grasshopper jumped
into the air. She was flying. Everyone was amazed. Years of
work and planning. Sixty feet into the flight a propeller
blade broke, sending Grasshopper to a crash landing. The
right spar snapped on impact.”
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-An
Account by Bob Franz
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VividNET.