Physics for the Win? A Group of Engineers Craft Propeller Bike Inspired by a 1963 Design

Folks, the year is 1963, and a man by the name of Ernest Winter tried to take cycling to a whole new level. He did this by dropping a massive propeller on the rear of his bicycle and claiming some rather impressive ride stats because of it, even hitting speeds of upwards of 20 mph (32 kph).

This is where Fireball Tool comes in, a YouTube channel with a love for recreating and testing some of history's weirdest and most out-there machines. This one was found in an old issue of Popular Mechanics, and this time, Ernest Winter's idea would become the aim of Fireball's video. It's time to tinker!

Now, the crew over at Fireball seems to have one major problem in reproducing this machine; so far, they've been able to find just one image of the Air Screw bike, as its been dubbed, and since Mr. Winter's leg is covering the drivetrain mechanics, some of the project we see is based on guesswork. Nonetheless, Fireball made it happen.

To bring this project to life, the folks at Fireball started with a 1974 Schwinn Varsity Sport weighing 40 lbs (18 kg) and rocking 27 in wheels. With the base vehicle chosen, it was time to go to work building a propeller, but first, the data recording hardware would be chosen.

After all that's been gathered, the bike is to be stripped of its 10-speed drivetrain, and work on the project begins. The tricky part here is transforming the pedal motion of a bike into what is ultimately a driveshaft to move the massive propeller on the rear, and that's sort of the direction the Fireball crew took things.

However, there would be a change in the overall design. Instead of incorporating a transmission into the bike, Fireball switched things up with a belted drivetrain to make things lighter and clearly smoother. With measuring, cutting, milling, and welding complete, the support designed to hold up the propeller shaft is nearly finished, and this stage of the project is complete. Light testing reveals that everything works.

Now for the propeller. Again, the Fireball crew had nothing else to go by except for that one image in the gallery, so after working out the shape and recreating a near copy, attaching it to the support from earlier, it was time to test this thing's capabilities, in a closed environment, of course. Overall, 17.2 mph (27.7 kph) winds were generated at a distance of six feet from the propeller. All you physics people out there: is this potential?

However, the real world rarely, if ever, offers us perfect test settings, so to see just what this machine can do, it was time to take things outdoors. Well, it's at this stage that the team over at Fireball figured out that things are not as simple or easy as they seem; they struggled to get this bugger up to any significant speed. Was it all for nothing? Or was it the headwind to blame? Maybe it's the gear ratio of 4:1.

Well, to eliminate as many variables as possible and to see the true potential of the Air Screw bike, Fireball brought in a local pro cyclist. After playing around with this bugger and seeing what it has to offer, chuckles and missing the pedals included, more testing was underway.

Funny enough, by the end of the video below, Jackson Bulger, the pro rider brought in was actually able to hit a top speed of 20 mph (32 kph) on this thing, but it seems as though the weather helped a little bit. Still, this raised the ultimate question and one that Fireball themselves asked: what if there was a way to make something like this faster? For that, we'll have to see what else this YouTube channel cooks up in the future.

Yet, for some, projects like these are anything but fun and games, and history has recorded countless propelled cycles, some of which have even been taken to the skies. Yes, they clearly had wings. The most notable project is the one we see around minute 5:45 of the video, where a gentleman takes to the skies by simply pedaling his way toward the sun. We can call him a modern-day Icarus.

As for folks like you and me, we can take things into our own hands, too, designing and spitting out better projects than this one. After all, there's potential in what Fireball has done here. Sure, we'll never see a subculture of propeller bikes springing up, but it's a fun machine to have sitting around in your garage to play a drinking game with. I wonder if a propelled cycle device is suitable for Red Bull Flugtag.