Wow, here's one thing I hadn't expected from the Martin JetPack.

It's very, very loud. Think Formula One. Or standing behind a 747. And the down-draft blows your hair back.

Today, the NZ-developed Martin JetPack, which recently got a second outing at the Oshkosh air show in Wisconsin, is being demo'd at the Morgo tech entrepreneur confab - this year being held in the Bay of Islands, to where Keallhauled has temporarily re-located.

I got a sneak preview last night of "Version 2.0" of the JetPack, which looks very similar to Version 1.0, but has more stable control systems.

I guess I should have expected the 100 lawn-mower volume level, but I'd been attuned to a more serene experience by the YouTube promo clip above. Now I realise why they stripped out the actual sound and inserted some relaxing classical music. They weren't just being cute.

"The muffler's still a bit rough," JetPack chief executive Richard Lauder told me later. However, he's unfussed. It's a commodity item.

Overall, it was a bit disappointing. There was lots of faffing around, and fine-tuning of the new stability system via a wireless laptop, before - with the help of two others holding each side of the JetPack - the pilot managed to fly a halting few feet. It was definitely more Richard Pearse than Wright Brothers.

The 'S' word
Still, from the above clip it's clear that the JetPack - invented by Glenn Martin and bankrolled by No. 8 Venture's Jenny Morel - can manage longer, more controlled flights.

One of the four engineers wrangling the JetPack told me whereas its controls could still be challenging, they hoped to get the device to the point where it would be as easy to ride as a Segway.

And there's the rub.

As US inventor Dean Kamen prepared to roll-out the Segway, Wired types were picking his human transporter would change the world.

But while the Segway overcame tremendous technical hurdles, it foundered against more prosaic obstacles: councils who wouldn't issue permits for punters to ride one the pavement, and insurance companies who didn't want a bar of it.

Entertainment, and rescue
So even if the JetPack makes miraculous advances in useability, people aren't about to start flying them to work.

However, Mr Martin has a cunning plan (as originally revealed by NBR on July 31).

Some time next year, Mr Martin will try to commercialise the JetPack, but using what he calls an "AJ Hackett model". Just as Mr Hackett turned bungy into a paid thrill-seekers' experience, Mr Martin will set up the JetPack in a paddock, then charge for rides (so far their are two JetPacks, incidentally, plus another "half" used for parts).

The engineers told me the JetPack would probably be coupled with a simulator to train customers before their real flight.

Ear plugs, too, would be a great idea.

Mr Lauder told me the JetPack was about three months from being technologically ready to be used as an entertainment device.

"But in terms of strapping it on and being able to fly to that island over there," he said, gesturing across the water from Paihia to Russell, "that's two or three years away".

In the meantime, his company is in talks with several government agencies, said Mr Lauder, with a view to the JetPack being used for search-and-rescue.

"Just imagine after the typhoon in Taiwan where they were trying to get people across rivers," said the chief exec. One issue: a JetPack can only fly in fair weather.

A little touch of the Muldoon era
I took some video of the latest JetPack flight, by the way (which was roughly its 2000th, incidentally) but I'm not about to upload it on my hotel's nosebleed broadband rate - but standby for a future instalment.

Incidentally, the Copthorne Bay of Islands (which is in great overall) has very long institutional-feeling corridors, a legacy of its past as a THC resort (for younger readers, THC was a government-owned chain that controlled resorts, Soviet-style, in strategic locations. It wasn't fully off-loaded under 1990, according to Treasury's asset sale page). There's some irony it's today packed with entrepreneurs.