The Little Airplane that Could!

The Little Airplane that Could!

galway.net , 12 August 2003

At 1.38pm Monday 11 August 2003, TAM5, a 2.5kg model aircraft, landed at Manin beach Co. Galway. But this was the end of no ordinary flight. TAM5 took off from Cape Spear, Newfoundland over 38 hours earlier, crossed the Atlantic ocean powered by its tiny 10cc engine and guided by GPS satellite navigation. The flight earns TAM5 an entry in the record books as the first model aircraft under Federation Aeronautique Internationale rules to cross the atlantic and the longest model flight at over 1,888 miles.

However the flight was not without its hitches. Indeed four earlier attempts were lost in the Atlantic ocean in August 2002, none of them making the half way mark. And for a while it seemed that TAM5 was doomed to a similar fate. The aircraft failed to check in its position for over 3 hours during the early hours of Monday morning. The crew were about to give up hope when contact was regained at 8am Irish time. Despite painfully slow progress and a dwindling fuel supply, the craft landed safely with only a few cc of fuel to spare.

The Trans-Atlantic Model project is the brainchild of Maynard Hill, a veteran aeromodeler and founder of the Society for Technical Aeromodel Research. "My dream about flying a model across the Atlantic started more than 20 years ago" said Hill. "When we started actual work on doing it 5 years ago, it seemed it would be easy. A piece of cake! After 5 years of effort it was clear to me that this is a really hard thing to do." Record breaking is nothing new to Hill -- his previous records include a record for altitude (26,900 feet/ 8,226 meters) and speed in a closed circuit (167 mph/269 km/hour).

Hill is largely responsible for the design and development of the aircrafts engine. With only 2.5kg of fuel to last the voyage, the engine must be tweaked for maximum efficiency. But its a hard balance to achieve: an excessively lean fuel/air mix and the engine risks stalling, an overly rich mixture and the craft will run out of fuel before arriving at its destination. Other members of the team include Joe Foster (electronics and guidance), and Roy Day a retired NASA engineer who contributed to the airframe design.

On the Irish end local amateur radio enthusiasts Enda Broadrick, Tom Frawley and Ronan Coyne were enlisted to help with the landing. Dave Brown, president of the American Academy of Model Aeronautics piloted the aircraft to the ground once visual contact was established.

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