John Moody John Moody's powered Icarus II in Southeastern Wisconsin Aviation Museum During 1967, Barry Palmer built what is likely the first weight-shift powered trike aircraft. It is now estimated that a modern flexible Rogallo wing hang glider requires at least 6 hp (4 kW) at the prop shaft and about 45 lbf (200 N) of thrust just to maintain level flight. However, the engine was quite underpowered and the craft could not achieve flight. It was powered by a 7 hp (5 kW) West Bend engine and mounted on top of a Rogallo-type flexible wing hang glider the propeller was 3 feet (1 m) in diameter and was made of balsa wood, covered with fiberglass and mounted in pusher configuration. In 1963, and during his free time, aeronautical engineer Barry Palmer built and experimented with a foot-launched powered hang glider at Bloomfield, Connecticut. Hang gliding record holder Don Mitchell fitted his Mitchell Wing B-10 with a motor, though the pilot still had to use their legs as undercarriage, an arrangement which persisted until he designed the B-10 Mitchell Wing. Differently, a rigid biplane designed also by teenager Taras Kiceniuk Jr., the Icarus II was a foundation for a modification in Larry Mauro's UFM Easy Riser biplane that started to sell in large numbers Larry Mauro would power his tail-less biplane one version was solar powered, called the Solar Riser. The Icarus V flying wing appeared with its tip rudders and swept-back style wing was used as a base for some powered experiments. Surprisingly, what really launched the powered ultralight aviation movement in the United States was not the Rogallo flexible wing but a whole series of rigid-wing motorized hang gliders. Inventors from Australia, France and England produced several successful microlight motor gliders in the early 1970s and very few were portable wings. These early experiments went largely unrecorded, even in log books, let alone the press, because the pioneers were uncomfortably aware that the addition of an engine made the craft liable to registration, airworthiness legislation, and the pilot liable to expensive licensing and probably, insurance. For a second time in aviation history, during the 1970s, motorization of simple gliders, especially those portable and foot-launched, became the goal of many inventors and gradually, small wing-mounted power packs were adapted. While powered microlights (ultralights) developed from hang gliding in the late 1970s, they were also a return to the type of low-speed aircraft that were common in the earlier years of aviation, but which were superseded as both civil and military aircraft pursued more speed. Main article: History of hang gliding Adding propulsion
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