11-Pound Model Plane Vs. The Atlantic, Again

Luap Nanreffeh writes "Last year, (/. Story 1, /. story 2) Maynard Hill and some retired NASA buddies tried to set a record for flying a model aeroplane across the atlantic ocean (from Newfoundland to Ireland). Their plan, using GPS, onboard controllers, and a gallon of gas, would have been the first to cross the Atlantic under FAI rules. They didn't have much luck last year, but now they're at it again. The first launch should be tonight."

Comments

No need for GPS

[Amsterdam Vallon]

Save weight and save fuel by removing the GPS requirement.

Once you develop the flight plan, some simple on-board sensors should take care of carrying that out.

GPS is overrated anyway.

Re:No need for GPS

[javiercero]

Yeah, we have heard of them.... except that most inertial units nowadays use GPS too, you know you goota get some sort of reference for your error and drift. Most new inertial units combine the accelerometers and gyroscopes to give you altitude, pitch and yaw, plus acceleration, plus GPS to combine that into the Kalman to get rid of dead reckoning.

It is a tad hard thing to do when you do not have a human navigator on board to do the corrections....

Re:No need for GPS

[John Carmack]

>Based on the first two responses to this post, you'd think people had never heard of inertial
>navigation. With MEMS accelerometers it ought to be pretty light, too.

Pure 3 axis inertial navigation with a strapdown inertial measuring requires extreme precision. MEMS inertial units aren't even in the right ballpark. Mechanical stable platform inertial systems that actually rotated inside the vehicles didn't require awesomely accurate sensors, but they are big, heavy, and not as reliable.

It is a useful programming exercise to write a simulation of a strapdown inertial system and play with bias, noise, and nonlinearity errors (add cross axis coupling and acceleration effects for micromachined gyros for bonus points). Pick reasonable ranges and quantize to 12 bits, then integrate at 100 hz or so. You can start the simulation motionless, but in a minute it will be cruising along at 60 mph in some random direction, hundreds of feet from the start position. An hour later, it will be heading for Mars.

The low end inertial systems that have been moderately soccessful are done by removing gravity from the equation and just doing 2D navigation, and often using other sensors, like magnetometers instead of rate gyros for heading, or odometer readings instead of double integrating accelerometers. Double integration of interrelated noisy sensors with an implicit 1G acceleration is really more demanding than it would initially seem.

The only reason you wouldn't want to use GPS in an ocean crossing is if you are afraid a Bad Guy might be jamming the signals.

John Carmack

By all other names

[jonhuang]

So this is a automatous GPS-guided long-range flying vehicle? Isn't that a cruise missle?

Admittedly, there would be some scaling up before poeple could fit a 2000lb warhead on it. But for bio/chemical WMDs, here's your cheap unstoppable delivery device.

I wish them luck, regardless.

Let the heckling begin!

[YetAnotherName]

From the website: "The airplane(s) we launch THIS month will be called "The Spirit of Butts Farm"

No, I'm not making that up. Check it yourself, if it's not slashdotted already.

Re:Drug running

[Ungrounded Lightning]

So, how long until drug runners send little planes from Columbia to Florida?

I remember, back when cruise missiles were first being developed, thinking how a strategic cruise missile (the one with the half-ton payload and restartable turbojet engine) would make a dandy drug smuggling vehicle. Load with a thousand pounds of cocaine, fly it below radar across the Gulf of Mexico and into the door of a large barn in some remote region of the US.

The big problem would be if SAC happened to see it coming. It would look JUST like a strategic cruise misslle coming at the US over the Gulf of Mexico. B-)

They might have gotten away with it back then. But these days the US keeps an AWACS over the Gulf all the time - to look for drug smugglers. Two can play at plowsharing.

Re:Drug running

[Elwood P Dowd]

They already use little submarines.

Re:Drug running

[FesterDaFelcher]

But these days the US keeps an AWACS over the Gulf all the time - to look for drug smugglers.

Not even *close* to all of the time. They fly drug interdiction flights about once a week, and it's mostly trainees watching. They do catch their fair share of drug planes though. Saw one disappear into the ocean one night, that was pretty cool/sad. They fly so low that big swells can actually swallow the plane.

Re:Drug running

[cjsnell]

So, how long until drug runners send little planes from Columbia to Florida?

Kind of pointless when they can send big planes. During the 1980s, Pablo Escobar's Medellin Cartel flew gutted 727s from Columbia to the States, loaded to the max with cocaine. Another one of his tricks was to send large numbers of small planes, each loaded with coke, towards the US. The DEA and Customs Service could only catch so many... You can read more about it in Mark Bowden's (author of Black Hawk Down) excellent book, Killing Pablo .

Jimmy Buffett also discusses air smuggling in his book, A Pirate Looks at Fifty .

This is not an endurance aircraft!

[KRL]

And that's exactly what they need to make this flight.

Now I don't mean to be a Negative Nancy, but I do know a thing or two about aircraft design. If they want this thing to go very far on very little fuel, they will need a very high aspect ratio wing. They have a standard model wing on it!

They need something that looks like a U-2 spyplane.

Re:Animals have rights, too

[charon_on_acheron]

I believe that we as humans do not have the right to own atoms of matter. We also don't have the right to own segments of our planet, and all things on that segment, since they also are made of atoms of matter.

This doesn't mean I am going to let you take my computer, car, home, land, or any other item that the government and society say I own. And if in the future the government and society choose to say I don't own them, 'because atoms want to be free', they will have a hard time forcing their idiotic set of beliefs on me.

You can't seem to handle the difference between what is a right, and what we as humans will do because we are humans. By the way, there is no 'innate moral centre' that precludes eating. And in my personal beliefs, all living organisms are just as deserving of kindness and compassion, not just the 'cute ones' like hamsters, dogs, cats, and bunnies. To me, you are still living in the grey area between barbarism and civility, with your pick-and-choose compassion.

Re:Or...

[WoTG]

Whatever happened to that 12 ft (or so) plane they found in Iraq that was supposed to be a potential "weapon of mass destruction". You know, that little remote controlled plane that was supposed to carry biological weapons in a aerosole spray can or something... Must have saw that video a dozen times on CNN before they got bored of it.