Heinrich Eder

I was wowed by an extraordinary video of 3 people levitating a sleek glider—just by walking underneath it. The person behind that and some other interesting videos is Dr. Heinrich Eder, in Munich. In his own words, from correspondence:

“I am a retired physicist once (and until now) busy in radiation protection (mostly medical sites).”

“I performed about 50 workshops at Flugwerft Schleißheim (museum on flight history) mostly on walkalong gliders (we say also "Schubsi" ) but also on indoor models. We built a 1 m glider 20 grams and flew it producing an upwind wave from 3 guys shoulder by shoulder.”

More imaginative designs!

"A delta that is really funny as it can make looping and other things with the panel." (My students also discovered this: with fast gliders you can swish the board hard and make the glider loop. However, it does not work as well with very low-density gliders--not enough momentum to carry them through the loop.)

"A paraglider invented from a friend of mine."

"My new education project "Lillström" a capacitor driven model (about 5 grams)."

Here is another video with a mix of walkalong gliders and amazing rubber-powered planes.