The fuselage is usually just a tangled trellis of thin steel tubing. The cockpit is an open bucket seat, bolted prayerfully to the frame. The power plant is a sputtering, 40-h.p. engine borrowed from a motorcycle. Hovering motionless in midair, its 10-ft. rotor blades windmilling, the makeshift craft looks like an airborne Erector set. But in the hands of an experienced pilot, it can fly like a startled mosquito—straight up to 8,000 ft., forward, sideways or backward at 65 m.p.h., right down to a feather-soft landing on any convenient driveway. Last week, in a...
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