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Old October 17th 03, 05:52 PM
Michael 182
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Default Model Airplane Across the Atlantic

This may well be old news to a lot of you, since it occurred in August, but
it was new to me, and a pretty cool accomplishment. On page 34 of this
month's Flying Mag there is a blurb about a model airplane named "Spirit of
Butts Farm" built by Maynard Hill that flew from Cape Spear to Ireland. The
balsa wood plane weighed 11 lbs and had a 6.5 foot wingspan. It flew 1888
miles in 38 hours, 23 minutes so if I can calculate it maintained a
groundspeed of about 49 MPH at a cruising altitude of 500 ft. It had an
onboard GPS and microprocessors for navigation. It burned 5.5 pounds of fuel
for the entire flight.

What an amazing feat for a hobbyist (albeit an unusually accomplished one).