Eight years ago today, an RC plane became the first to fly across the Atlantic
us1.campaign-archive2.com
us1.campaign-archive2.com
1) 1 litre of fuel doesn't get you that far.
2) Was the entire course programmed into the plane? This is non-trivial given that high winds would likely push a small little plane off course.
3) Article claims that GPS telemetry was sent continuously. What did they use? Wifi doesn't work. There are no cell towers in the ocean. The only option that could remotely work is satellite data. That costs a fortune and has heavy equipment.
#3 is the big one.
EDIT: I am still skeptical but less so after reading the child comments. It seems HAM radio was used to relay telemetry. Communicating with a tiny moving object via HAM still seems a bit unbelievable. But I don't know enough on this subject. Also, the craft was supposedly using auto pilot over the Atlantic. I don't see how it is an RC craft ... perhaps a UAV would be a more appropriate term. Anyways, upvoting child posts for a stimulating early morning thought exercise :)
Also remember the wind is behind you flying that way across the atlantic. Helps a huge amount in terms of power required.
What? Were they two billion miles away?
Guess how long they can stay in the air? Hours. Gliders stay afloat by finding hot air streams where clouds are forming, riding the plume up, then gliding to the next cloud.
It's not what this RC plane was doing, obviously, but posting it as an example showing how fuel can be irrelevant in the air. It's also an amazing hobby for one to have. He has all sorts of stories about the weather changing and having to crash in a farmer's field...
2) Decades before GPS there was gyroscopic navigation. There has been autopilot for RC planes since as far as I can remember, for me the 90s.
3) There are many other radio bands available besides 2.4GHz. And satellite is not the only option. You have packet radio, marine radio, and HAM (amateur radio).
They probably used amateur packet radio to transmit telemetry. I suppose it may be hard to believe if you're not a ham, but this is a rather common usage scenario, even over long distances.
~34 ounces per liter, ~2(+) ounces per hour, implies >2 liters for the flight.
The speeds are about right, though: 1800 miles/55mph=33 hours, /42 = 43 hours.
Imagine that: in less than 100 years since the Wright Brothers took off, we have a hobbyist autonomous plane that flies across the Atlantic. That's a huge achievement nevertheless.
This was not the first unmanned autopilot flight across the Atlantic; that was Laima, five years earlier: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insitu_Aerosonde
Laima took 26 hours and 5.7 liters of fuel. Her three sisters didn't make it across the ocean.
http://www.museumofflight.org/aircraft/insitu-areosonde-laim...
(She's a pretty bird. If you're in Seattle on the first Thursday of the month, you can see her free from 5-9 PM.)
Within the colloquial definition, the plane is of a class known as 'RC planes' - it's of a size and general design pattern that is conventionally controlled by a ground based radio pilot, it couldn't be used for carrying passengers, goods or weapons. For very sensible techincal reasons it had to run on autopilot for much of its journey, but the vehicle itself was still undeniably a member of the class colloquially known as 'RC planes'.
By analogy, let's suppose I purchased a retired F1 racing car for whatever purpose. I don't have the entries, licenses and any of a number of other things to enter it into FIA sanctioned F1 races, but does that stop it from being an F1 car while it's not being used for F1 races?