Word: puffins
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...limpets and winkles. By contrast, when the slick floated to the coast of Brittany, the French insisted that toxic detergents should not be used. Scooping up the oil was slower, but less destructive to sea life. However, the bird population has never recovered from the oil. The rare puffin, which nests in the Channel islands, has almost ceased to exist...
...Lundy Island in the Bristol Channel; of a heart attack; in Barnstaple, England. For 800 years, the monarchs of Lundy (the island was first given to a nobleman by King Stephen in the 12th century; more recently, whoever owned the land held the title) battled mainland policies, minted the puffin, worth 1.9?, which was outlawed in 1931 when it ran afoul of British currency laws. Harman, whose father bought the island in 1925 for $80,000, rebuffed the mother country's efforts to incorporate the taxfree, school-less, policemanless haven. Harman's son, John, succeeds to the "throne...
Wimpenny, a De Havilland aerodynamicist, has been experimenting with man-powered flight ever since the '40s. Two years ago, after Kremer offered his prize money, Wimpenny organized the Hatfield Man Powered Aircraft Club and designed Puffin. Spars were made from spruce. The plane's framework was covered with a plastic film one three-thousandth of an inch thick. As it took shape in a hangar, Puffin's fuselage grew to 20 ft., its wings spread out for 84 ft. Practicing in the cockpit, Wimpenny took the classic pose of a racing cyclist-body bent forward, hands...
...Puffin's maiden flight last fall, Wimpenny's legs churned bicycle pedals that turned both the main landing-gear wheel and the gft. propeller attached to the plane's tail. Puffin stayed aloft for less than a minute. Not until spring did Wimpenny manage a 993-yd. flight, and even then his aircraft could not make the required figure-eight turns. Said Wimpenny last week as he waited for calm weather so that he could try again: "We can now turn Puffin right 'round...
...clubs. Southampton University aerodynamics students have built Sumpac, which has an 80-ft. wing span and also uses a pusher propeller. Their pilot is longdistance Runner Martin Hyman, who pedals in a low-slung cockpit while reclining on his back. Sumpac, which made its maiden flight one week before Puffin, is still given to ground loops and violent yaws that its pilot is unable to control...