It's a bird! It's a plane! No, it's an ornithopter designed by Leonardo da Vinci.

Byline: Mark Baker The Register-Guard

EVERGREEN AVIATION MUSEUM 

McMINNVILLE - Now here's a "da Vinci Code" that someone from Oregon cracked.

And, in theory, it can fly. Like a bat.

Ken Spence of Bend researched 500-year-old drawings of Leonardo da Vinci's "ornithopter," a full-scale, birdlike flying machine the Italian genius drew up on paper but apparently never constructed.

In fact, Spence, a creative development consultant for aviation-related models and museums, may be the first man in history to build it.

And you can see it on display through August at the Evergreen Aviation Museum, best known as the home of Howard Hughes' massive Spruce Goose.

"One of the things I have a passion about is telling the story behind an invention," Spence says, adding he's always been keenly interested in the inventions of da Vinci, Thomas Edison and others.

The story behind da Vinci's ornithopter is this: It is believed to be the most complex of several flying machines da Vinci designed on paper. He studied birds for 20 years "and was fascinated by how birds fly," Spence says.

Da Vinci supposedly designed the wings of the ornithopter after studying bird wings, and the design brings together the complex articulation of bird-wing bones - in this case the bones of a bat - with an ingenious human-powered mechanism that employs such innovations as a lengthening lead screw, according to Spence.

"You look at it and you think, 'You'd have to be one strong puppy to lift that thing up,' ' says Jim Lilley, a docent at the museum.

With a 23-foot wingspan, it is difficult to imagine da Vinci, or anyone other than a bodybuilder, operating the apparatus made with hand-tied rope, wood, leather and steam-bent cane.

In the middle of the flying machine are stirrups for the operator's feet, and Spence says he knows it is operable "because I have operated it."

He also designed it so a motor could be attached to it.

Spence researched the machine by delving into dozens of da Vinci books he has collected, and sought inspiration from da Vinci's notebooks and manuscripts that he has found at libraries and on the Internet.

All of da Vinci's manuscripts were written backward and upside down. To read them you must hold a mirror to them, as anyone knows who has seen "The da Vinci Code," one of this year's blockbuster movies, or read Dan Brown's best-selling novel on which the movie is based.

And it was no different with constructing the ornithopter, says Spence, who laid out the contraption's drawings on a grid using a three-dimensional computer-aided drafting system to determine dimensions and refine the design.

Asked if Bend residents will one day see him flying like a bat over town, Spence says: "Sure, why not? They already think I'm crazy enough."

ORNITHOPTER What: A flying machine constructed from one of Leonardo da Vinci's drawings Where: Evergreen Aviation Museum, 500 N.E. Capt. Michael King Smith Way, McMinnville; [phone] Cost: From $6 for active military to $11 for adults; open daily 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Information: www.sprucegoose.org