Igor I. Sikorsky Human Powered Helicopter Competition AeroVelo's Atlas human-powered helicopter conducted a flight that met all the requirements of the AHS International competition, and received the $250,000 prize. In the history of the prize, dozens of teams have designed and built human-powered helicopters, although few have made it airborne. The AHS competition was named in honor of Igor Sikorsky, one of the founders of the technical society. AHS initiated the prize purse at $25,000, but later raised it to $250,000. The first HPH to get off the ground was the "Da Vinci III" in 1989, designed and built by students at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo
Igor Sikorsky Kiev Polytechnic Institute. After the academic year, Sikorsky again accompanied his father to Germany in the summer of 1908, where he learned of the accomplishments of the Wright brothers' Flyer and Ferdinand von Zeppelin's dirigible. Sikorsky later said about this event: "Within twenty-four hours, I decided to change my life's work. I would study aviation." By the start of World War I in 1914, Sikorsky's airplane research and production business in Kiev was flourishing, and his factory made bombers during the war. After the Bolshevik revolution began in 1917, Igor Sikorsky fled his homeland, because the new government threatened to