Homebuilt electric twin...
 

You really have to take your hat off...!

Well, Orville and Wilbur managed 120 feet 114 years ago and look where we are now. Chapeau!

And Sir Hiram Maxim the inventor of the first fully automatic machine gun did it 121 years ago on 30 July 1896 with the Maxim flyer that did not need a catapult launch. The Wright flyer was a light weight copy.

AND generated so much lift that it broke it restraints on test ,although with the outer wing panels absent. Incidentally he also had an auto pilot designed for it (later the inspiration for Denny-Brown ship stabilisers).

Yes there are even pictures of it in the field it crashed in with the then prince of Wales and H G Wells even used the design to illustrate his book War of the Worlds. It was steam powered and ran on what is now Avtur it weighted 7000lbs with 2000 lbs thrust it had 2 axis steam powered gyro servo control and a crew of 3. The backers pulled out after the crash as had spent £60,000, a lot of money at the time. So the Wrights gained from Maxims work and added simplicity and wing warping. Maxim was born in the USA and became a British Subject, I believe he had a state funeral and is buried in Westminster Abbey.

No doubt the armchair aerodynamicists can find a multitude of things wrong with Peter Sripol's electric biplane, but it certainly does fly.

The 105kg English Electric Wren flew (just) in 1921 on 7.5hp, so, after 96 years and with the benefit of modern materials, it should be possible to build something considerably lighter.

With the ready availability of large brushless motors, speed controllers and lithium polymer batteries, and the sub-70kg category needing no regulation, we are likely to be seeing more designs like Peter Sripol's biplane. The lack of the most destructive vibration that small high powered engines produce and the ease of multi-electric motor installations opens up a multitude of new avenues to designers.

I believe he is buried in West Norwood Cemetery. Haraka senior did a lot of work over several years on Sir Hiram, producing some very detailed engineering drawings. We spent time in the U.K. Science Museum with the surviving (naptha powered?) engine ( the other went down on the Titanic) as well as swinging around with profiling kit on the surviving propeller up over the entrance to the aeronautical gallery.
Maxim is popularly portrayed as some form of engineering buffoon ,despite inventing the Maxim, later Vickers Maxim , machine gun.
He was very scientific in his work, a fine engineer and an aviation pioneer who ,in my estimation, gets scant regard for "pushing the envelope".