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TAM 5 Has landed
bzant writes "TAM 5 The model airplane, (see our previous story), has successfully landed in Ireland. This was the second plane they launched. Other than some slow speeds and a concern over a lean fuel mixture the flight seemed to go as planned."
The project is basically a model airplane that crossed the Atlantic on its own using GPS for navigation.
Martin
http://tam.plannet21.com/FAQs.htm#leader
If you read the "article" linked to you'll see that this is apparently the 5th plane, first crashed, second crashed, third crashed, four apparantly still missing in the newfie triangle as the site has no update for it.
That's a LOT harder than you'd think. Even over interplanetary distances there is a lag between transmission and reception that can be potentially catastrophic - radio waves can only travel at c, so as the distance to your radio controlled toy increases you get corresponding increases in the time taken to get a signal to or from it. In the case of the moon, you have:
Distance between the moon and earth(d): 384,500 km
Speed of light(c): 299,792,458 m/s
d / c = 1.283 seconds
So you end up sending a signal and a second later your rocket/whatever responds. Obviously not a situation in which tight maneuvering is possible.
The problem is even worse to other planets - delays to Mars run into several minutes. To do anything complicated things send out there have to be as autonomous as possible with any control from Earth being little more than "go here", "do this", "go there" and letting the machine work out how to do it.
-- http://www.swcp.com/~hudson/
The problem with blimps is that they are very wind sensitive. If you want to use one outdoors it should be really calm, or you can end up chasing your blimp all over town. Indoors however, they are really cool. If you have a somewhat small blimp or a big room.
Martin
That seems a lot easier than trying to have the plane land itself, or landing it remotely (and by remotely I mean from the wrong side of the Atlantic).
Already is.
I'm sorry that i can';t find the link (how dare you state something without a link) but some people have already made something like that. It's even niftier than you imagine now.
They build a submersible that uses the flow of water as it sinks to propel itself. The difference in water temperature is then used to generate energy. At the bottom, the proces is reversed, again gaining momentum and energy as it raises!
At the surface it then sends out the research data aquired sofar, and sinks again. Till the end of days.
cool he?
Why are other peoples sig's always more witty ???
This would be the fifth plane they have launched, read the website:
#1. Crashed due to a steering servo issue
#2. Fuel system problem
#3. Bad weather
#4. LOST
Mod the parent up. This is an amazing accomplishment.
As a R/C modeler myself, the specs of this plane are basically what I learned to fly on. Think: standard trainer with an O.S. 61 engine. This sort of plane can typically fly about 20 minutes on a tank of gas, and never more than about 800 feet in altitude, and never more than about a mile and half away. Things you have to worry about are:
1. Running out of gas.
2. Having the temperature conditions change the performance of the engine, causing it to stall. (It is not uncommon to tweak the fuel mixture on a model airplane on nearly every flight through an afternoon of flying.)
3. Such a small plane is susceptible to fairly small gusts of wind that can make if fly off-course, flip it upside down, etc. Anything more than about 15mph wind, and most model airplanes get tricky to fly. Especially if it is gusty (i.e. not a constant wind speed/direction)
4. Battery life - standard R/C batteries will last for about 2-4 hours max.
5. There is no way to restart the motor if it quits
6. Things can (and often do) come apart in flight. These things are made of balsa wood and heat-shrink coating. I've had planes explode in flight, wings come off, tails come off, etc.
Now, take a model airplane that is only about 5 feet long and with a wing span of 6 feet, and operates as described above, and modify it so that it can:
1. Fly continuously for 40 hours.
2. Fly through day and night in a variety of temperature and moisture conditions and not have the engine quit, or have to adjust the fuel mixture (since you can't do that in flight on the TAM models)
3. Navigate 1900 miles by itself, negotiating mid-Atlantic weather, variable wind speed, variable wind direction, variable air density, temperature, etc, with NO help from a pilot.
4. Somehow provide power for all of the electronics for 40 hours
5. Somehow fit 5.5 pounds of fuel, plus standard R/C radio, plus a home-grown GPS auto-navigation system, plus an alternator for the electrical equipment, plus two telemetry data systems, plus the computer to run it all into a plane that only weighs 11 pounds (think: two bag of groceries) and not weaken the structure so much that the whole mess DOESN'T fly apart on you.
Now do that while legally blind and def.
All I can say is: Wow.
(okay, I had a whole bunch of four-letter words to say, but they aren't appropriate in this situation...)
I'm from Ireland and I mapped the precise gps coordinates to a map which seems to suggest the model plane actually didn't quite reach dry land at time of post. Maybe it has now but latitude 53 degrees, 27.67; and longitude 10 degrees, 4.20 is in the Atlantic ocean just a mile or so off the coast og county Galway - so close you could see the emerald hills (if it's not too misty)
How about the underwater glider: http://abcnews.go.com/sections/scitech/CuttingEdge /cuttingedge021011.html
in most areas means significant, UNCORRECTIBLE vision problems that are severe enough to be somewhat disabling.
If someone who is 'legally blind' is driving, then one of two things is the case. Either he's not truly deserving of the status, OR he shouldn't be on the road. Probably the latter. Someone who's 'legally blind' should not be able to pass the vision exam to drive, even with corrective lenses, but unfortunately cheating the vision exam in most US states at least is quite easy -- one can just memorise the chart, since the same one is always in use.
Someone who's legally blind may be able to read, but they will not be able to read the normal type size in a newspaper or book without a strong magnifying glass.