02:52 PM CST on Tuesday, February 14, 2006

By BYRON HARRIS / WFAA-TV

WFAA-TV

Larry Neal says his fly-drive vehicle doesn't need much room to take off.

How much time do you spend stuck in traffic on your way home from work?

There may be a solution: Flying to work.

A North Texas man has patented a flying motorcycle.

The transportation breakthrough, called the Super Sky Cycle, comes from a small aeronautics lab near Bridgeport.

The top half of the contraption looks something like a helicopter. The bottom half is a three-wheeled motorcycle. The resulting vehicle is able to leap stacked traffic in a single bound.

Larry Neal calls this a "fly-drive vehicle."

"It is easy to fly. I can fly it hands off. I can leave the ground and put my arms out like this. It's autostable," he said.

An unpowered rotor on top creates enough lift for the Super Sky Cycle to fly. A propeller on the back pushes it through the air. It takes off quickly, and can fly as fast as 70 mph in complete safety, Neal said.

"I can shut the engine off at 500 feet and come down in total control slower than a parachute," he added.

But that's only half the story.

Back on the ground, the rotor folds up, and the vehicle becomes a motorcycle, with a range of about 300 miles.

Neal has patented all of this and said the Super Sky Cycle will go on sale in a couple of months for $25,000 (assembly required).

Neal's company, Butterfly LLC, has other models in the prototype stage. All are designed to fit through a seven foot garage door. He said it won't be long before that "beep" you hear on the highway could be coming from above as well as behind.

E-mail bharris@wfaa.com