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TAM 5 Has landed

Posted by Hemos on from the the-little-plane-that-could dept.

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."

10 of 219 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Help us out a little by martingunnarsson · · Score: 3, Informative

    The project is basically a model airplane that crossed the Atlantic on its own using GPS for navigation.

    --
    Martin
  2. Amazing by arvindn · · Score: 5, Informative

    http://tam.plannet21.com/FAQs.htm#leader

    Who is the leader of this project?

    Maynard Hill is an American, born in Pennsylvania in 1926. He has been an avid modeler all his life. He has contributed technical advances through his 23 world records. He has contributed as President of the AMA and delegate to international model airplane meetings. Maynard has designed and contructed all the models for this project in spite of the fact that he is legally blind and nearly deaf. Apart from the goal of setting a new record for straight line distance, one of Maynard's objectives is to demonstrate that people with handicaps can overcome them.

    1. Re:Amazing by _Upsilon_ · · Score: 3, Informative

      I live in Newfoundland, and was actually there at some of the launches (including the one that made it) and have talked to Mr. Hill.

      He gave an interview to a local newspaper here last summer, and part of it was about his handicaps. It mentioned that in order for him to glue the planes together, he had to put some bright red dye in the glue so that he could see it.

      Glad to see that they made it this time.

  3. Re:Wow by AllUsernamesAreGone · · Score: 3, Informative

    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.

  4. Re:Second Plane, Let's see TAM 5 what about 1-4 by WHExeter · · Score: 3, Informative

    Actually, if you nose around a little the site details the fate of all four previous attempts. In text it says that 1 and 2 were quickly lost due to mechanical problems or miscalculations. For 3 and 4 it actually shows on a map how far they had progressed before last contact. A different shot of the same map shows TAM 5 reaching its destination. All in all, a very cool project -- a substantial goal accomplished through ingenuity and persistence. Thanks /. for tipping us to the TAM project.

  5. Re:Congratulations! by tramm · · Score: 3, Informative
    martingunnarsson wrote:
    This is really a cool project, and while it might seem like a geeky hobby thing, I think it's much more important than that. I think we'll se R/C helicopters that move around on their own [...]
    Like autopilot.sourceforge.net? It is a Free Software autopilot for RC helicopters that has successfully flown for several km and been adapted to numerous different helicopter models. Rotomotion, LLC builds a commercial UAV based on the software and also sells kits for more technically inclined users of the software.
    The flight over the ocean shows that they can handle long distance flights as well, at lest in 50% of the cases :-)
    Although TAM5 was a fixed wing, not a rotorcraft, and the success rate was more like 20% (1 out of 5)...
    --
    -- http://www.swcp.com/~hudson/
  6. Re:Landing most impressive by General_Corto · · Score: 4, Informative
    According to a National Geographic article from last year's attempts, the landing is handled by a local pilot:

    Pilot Paul Howey and others will be in Ireland waiting for the plane to appear on the horizon. They will head out to the bog and, if the plane comes in, take over manual control and land it.

    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).
  7. CORRECTION by jsimon12 · · Score: 4, Informative

    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

  8. Re:Hell of an achievement. by zelbinion · · Score: 5, Informative

    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...)

  9. Suspicious by essreenim · · Score: 3, Informative

    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)