Hamel Flying Saucer (HFS)

The Hamel Flying Saucer (HFS), also called the Gravitomagnetic Drive, is the claimed magnetically propelled craft designed by David Hamel beginning in the mid-1970s. The source archive dossier describes it through 3D designs derived from Dan LaRochelle's original 2D diagrams, construction photographs, and builder commentary by Tracy Jones. No working device is documented.

Three-stage architecture

The complete ship is described as built in three stages, constructed from the top down, with the motor at the top:

• First stage ("the motor") — analogous to the ionosphere, described as the stage in which ions are produced. This is the part most of the dossier details, and the part Hamel's original craft is said to have been equivalent to.
• Second stage — analogous to the stratosphere, where the air is thin and hard to breathe.
• Third stage — analogous to sea level, where passengers would live.

The motor sits at the top of three poles, and the second stage is built downward from there.

First-stage motor construction

The motor consists of a fixed top, a fixed base, and two semi-free floating wings between them. The wings float on ceramic magnets and are restricted in their travel by balls and pinions.

• Granite balls: three, spaced 120° apart between the two wings. Each sits in a cup; the raised square piece on the underside of the top wing houses the cup for the ball between the wings.
• Granite pinions: six total, spaced 120° apart — three between the top and the top wing, three between the base and the bottom wing. Each sits in a cup in the rim.
• Air intakes: three horizontal slits in the circumference of the base rim.
• Central return hole: a central hole in the base through which air returns, called by Dan LaRochelle the "1st Stage Vortex Return." A crescent-shaped hole is visible inside the central opening.
• Rod and cross: a rod at the top of the motor sits in a cross at the bottom of the bottom wing's cone and moves within it.
• Alignment holes: matching holes in the base and bottom wing through which a bolt is inserted to hold the wings lined up during assembly.

All magnets are ceramic magnets. The second-stage pinions are larger than the first-stage pinions, following what Hamel calls "the rules of the dimensions" or what others call the "master pyramid matrix."

Claimed mechanism

According to the account attributed to the beings Hamel said he met, the ship floated in an anti-gravity bubble powered by electrically charged vortical airflow between magnetic rings. The motor needed no fuel except the inherent magnetic forces that attracted and repelled its components. By varying the relative position of the magnetic rings, a vortex of charged air could be created intense enough to escape gravity and radar. See Gravitomagnetic Drive Claim.

Magnet arrangement

The wings are held in a metastable state of magnetic repulsion, described in the dossier as rejection magnets. Tracy Jones's construction notes record 2 × 4 × 6 inch magnets installed at Hamel's direction — 18 on one side of the wing and 18 on the underside, each in rejection to the other — held in stainless steel channel, with the indentations facing the opposing magnets face to face. Standard rectangle magnets from AZ Industries were used. A welded pipe holds a long spike that keeps the wings lined up during assembly; Jones stresses that if the wings move too far from side to side, the magnets come into attraction and lock up, and that the pinions restrict this travel.

Reported test results

Tracy Jones's September 1999 test reports are the only quasi-experimental record. Driving the bottom wing with a windshield wiper motor, he reported:

• Bottom wing oscillation of about 1/4 inch; top wing slightly less.
• Center floating magnet oscillation of 1/8 to 1/4 inch, with no spin.
• Portable phone disconnection up to about 5 feet, strongest within 2 inches of the skin and constant all the way around the device.
• TV picture interference and flashing correlated with sparking at loose aluminum joints.
• "No lift off" after 325 minutes of running.

Reported failures

The dossier records that Dan LaRochelle "knows as many as forty people who have tried to build a forty-five-gallon oil drum device based on Hamel's design — all unsuccessfully," including a friend who spent $10,000 and whose marriage ended. Steve Hiscock spent $4,000–$5,000 over twelve years on an incomplete eight-inch model, estimating a two-foot minimum functional size and another $5,000–$7,000 needed. Jones reported "pretty much nada" from plexiglass models. Hamel's own account is that his original first-stage craft flew off and was never recovered.

Status

No patent is cited. No measurement of force, power, field strength or lift appears in the source. See Hamel Claims vs. Evidence: The Gravitomagnetic Drive, Forty Failed Replications and the Absence of Measurement.