PARIS AIR SHOW: How 'fusion man' flies like a bird

You know that dream where you can fly? Do you know what it feels like? Well, Yves Rossy does, and the experience qualifies him either as a madman or, just maybe, the greatest aviator in history.

Rossy is a formidable flyer. A former Swiss air force Dassault Mirage III pilot, he has earned his crust flying for Swissair and now Swiss, in McDonnell Douglas DC-9s, Boeing 747 and Airbus airliners. He is also a hang glider, paraglider and skydiver. Pushing the envelope has been an obsession for the 50-year-old.

As he explained recently to the human power group at the Royal Aeronautical Society in London, his dream has always been to fly like a bird, which is, he says: "The essence of flight." That's something people have known throughout history, from Icarus to DaVinci to more recent "birdmen" who have tried to mix skydiving with flying by donning winged suits.

As Rossy puts it, in freefall at 110kt (200km/h), a skydiver feels like he is flying, and doesn't realise the ground is coming fast until about 3,300ft (1,000m). But, to him, that "flight" was still short of the "pure emotions" of flying he sought.

He took to skysurfing - skydiving with his feet strapped to a surfboard - which allows some forwards gliding, and later tried jumping with a disc on his feet, which makes for fabulous aerobatics. All of that is fun but not flying, he says..

A combination of pursuing the dream of flight and a fortuitous time in the development of technology gave Rossy the breakthrough that turned him into the winged and jet-powered Fusion Man.

Recognising the obvious - that birds do not stand on their wings to fly - Rossy developed a set of inflatable wings to wear on his back. This was a huge advance over the efforts of earlier "birdmen", like France's Leo Valentine, who went skydiving in suits with crude wings attached to the arms and, notes Rossy, invariably killed themselves.

By being inflatable, Rossy's wings could be deployed after he jumped out of the aircraft, and with trial and error he could glide. Unfortunately, the parachute easily tangled with the wings. Rossy innovated a 'chute that could deploy in level flight - typically they are meant to unfurl in straight descent.

Several iterations of wing later, Rossy was able to take advantage of carbonfibre construction to produce folding wings, which gave much better performance.

The critical step to real flight was to use the latest generation of turbofan engines developed for model aircraft. Four of these - at 48lb thrust (0.21kN) each and mounted under the wings - gave him the power to not just glide, but made him the first birdman to climb. In 2006, he made a "perfect" 5min flight to mark "the greatest day of my life". Then, as Fusion Man, with financial support from Hublot watches, on 26 September 2008 he made a 13min flight across the English Channel.

Next, he wants more power. There are motors that could give him 310lb of thrust, enough to climb vertically.

Ultimately, he says, with enough thrust he could do away with the wings and then Fusion Man would become Ironman.