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Comment by js2 | Hacker News Reader

> He touched down on Norfolk Island after being in the air for twenty-three hours and five minutes.

How is that possible? The Cessna 188 has a cruise speed around 110 mph (at 75% power) and a range of 370 miles. That implies a bit over 3 hours of time aloft. Stall speed is 60 mph. I'm not understanding how you get to 23 hours of flight time.

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It's covered in the Bakula movie - they stripped the plane down to the extreme and installed fuel tanks so huge that they could barely take off.

That's also why he was on his own - his oppo crashed on takeoff due to the massive fuel load.

It looks like the full movie with the explanation is on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-4_f3T8AzJo.

Forgive my ignorance, but could you say what "his oppo" means? Thanks!

(Update: after reading the Wikipedia article I see that it probably refers to "his colleague", but I wasn’t familiar with the use of "oppo" here.)

Friend/companion. https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/oppo

Ah, roger that, thanks!

I see that this is a British English word, so it brings to mind the old saying: "Two peoples divided by a common language."

If it helps, I grew up in England and never heard this word either -- sounds like use outside aviation/Navy is rare.

It's archaic, apparently an abbreviation of opposite number. We might use work buddy today, where colleague is too wooden.

Was pretty common to hear amongst the wartime generation, but has declined pretty rapidly since the 80s. Never once heard it used for "sweetheart" as Webster's seems to think.

Coincidentally, not sure if the brand https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oppo was inspired by that, but it certainly fits.

"Oppo" is British naval slang for colleague, I heard it alot from the older navy staff at the Australian Defence Force Academy.

https://www.hmsrichmond.org/dict_o.htm https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Appendix:Australian_English_m...

> OPPO > Naval slang - short for opposite number - for the person doing the same job as one's self in another watch or ship. In the former case, since you relieved each other (in the old two-watch days), it behoved you to become friends; thus the word Oppo came to mean Chum. On a two-watch watchbill, the name of a man's 'opposite number' in the other watch was shewn against his own name in the opposite column.

Blocked in NZ. Ironic.

Curious as to what's being censored here? From NZ too but thought we were pretty onto it with not censoring content

It's a full-length movie uploaded to YouTube. I'm guessing ContentID got it.

For ferry flights over the ocean, they'll install extra fuel tanks in space normally used for passengers or cargo.

Remarkably, the flight endurance record was set in a Cessna 172 and stands at 64 days. It was refuelled daily from a moving truck. https://disciplesofflight.com/flight-endurance/

Bu the Cessna in the article wasn't being refuelled - it was over the ocean the entire time. The question was about fuel endurance, not mechanical or lubricants endurance, as in your example.

Another story of a ferry pilot with a Cessna - though this time, the Atlantic - http://www.cessna150-152.com/transatlantic.htm (wayback with images: https://web.archive.org/web/20160306022257/http://www.cessna... )

> Leon meanwhile was too busy making final preparations to show concern. An extra "L"-shaped 66-gallon fuel tank had been made. It took up most of the baggage and right hand passenger area. The airplane was then flown to Moncton, Canada for transatlantic clearance.

Tangentially related is the "how do you get a Boeing 717 (range 2,060 nautical miles) to Hawaii (SFO to Hawaii is 2084 nautical miles)?" - https://www.reddit.com/r/aviation/comments/8scjkk/ever_wonde...

There are a number of videos on YouTube of people ferrying small planes across the north Atlantic. Usual route is via Iqaluit, Nunavut on to Greenland.

The hops required to fly over the northern Atlantic are surprisingly small, and quite manageable even in small single engine planes; they're ferried back and forth somewhat "routinely". You might still need ferry tanks, and definitively wear a dry suit while in flight (you don't have time to put it on when you are going down...), and you need a life raft. In case of engine failure, if you (and the life raft) get out of the plane and you get into the life raft within a minute or so, your chances of survival are quite decent. (The cold water will kill you in very short order otherwise.)

You can go Senegal to Recife, Brazil, if you prefer warmer water, but the hops are larger, and there's basically only one island in the middle with a military airport that you can't land on except in an emergency.

The Pacific, in contrast, is this vast ocean (as it were) of water - it's insane. Google Earth shows this beautifully. There's the very northern route via Alaska and Siberia - but while you are over land there, there are virtually no airfields.

Alternatively, you can hop via Hawaii, Marshall Islands, Micronesia, CMNI, Guam, Philippines/Japan, but still, the distances are enormous. And then the South Pacific - look at it in Google Earth. It's just water. Probably better off taking a boat there than a plane :-)

75% is a big waste of fuel if you’re trying to cross an ocean. Maximum range is achieved at Vg. I’m told maximum endurance can be had at 76% of Vg, though I haven’t checked the math on that myself so don’t quote me on it. :)

There’s another optimum at the reciprocal, Vg * 1.316, that gets you maximum speed per unit of fuel burned.

The Cessna 188 is an agricultural aircraft with a 200 gallon hopper, usually for carrying pesticides. I expect that this had been used as an extra fuel tank. The standard fuel tanks take 37 gallons. My dad was an agricultural pilot in the UK and in the early 1960s they would fly Piper PA25's from the UK to Sudan to spray cotton. That was made possible by using the hopper as a fuel tank.

Flying at a lower speed than cruise speed will allow you to save fuel (per unit of time, not distance). The plane looks quite lightweight.

Perhaps the plane was equipped with long-range fuel tanks? I agree that it sounds like a very long time for this kind of plane.

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