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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."
At least give your audience a brief two sentence re-cap, state the goal of the endeavor, and give a reason why we should click the link (it's commonly refferred to as a "blurb" in journalism). Slashdot is now popular (and commercial) enough to have editors that can at least follow the basics of journalism. You are making OSDN look bad. Step up and be big boys, for Christ's sake.
That's impressive. Now when are they launching a radio controlled rocket to the moon? Obviously it's the next step.
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Programming is like sex... Make one mistake and support it the rest of your life.
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 used for surveillance and as a support for police and firefighters pretty soon. I mean, these things already exist. The flight over the ocean shows that they can handle long distance flights as well, at lest in 50% of the cases :-)
Martin
http://tam.plannet21.com/FAQs.htm#leader
It is nice to see that they finally made it.
Now, can they make it all the way around?
Now the leprechauns can escape to other countries!
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.
now we know how to get 1-2kilos of cocaine or some of those lovely anthrax/botulism spores from USA to Ireland, iam sure the IRA will be most pleased at the developments there now
we have a nice non-radar detectable transporation method thats cheap and capable, nothing like a practical application of long distance remote controlled (cheap) devices for terrorists
This is great news, but like all pioneering events, it's just the beginning of a brave new future. Someday, regularly scheduled model airplane flights over the Atlantic, as well as to other destinations, will be a commonplace occurance. In the future, everyone will have unmaned aerial vehicle service available right in their backyards. Soon, inexpensive GPS programmable reusable UAV's with automatic colision avoidance will be available to anyone for less than the price of an automobile at stores everywhere.
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
-nm-
..don't panic
Thanks I made that up myself, you are either the first person to get it, or anyone else who gets it thinks it's "too Street" for their sensibilities...
Plus You QUOTED my sig and got Mod'd 2 points. I want those back!!!
I went to battle MC Escher, but drew a blank
It would be pretty cool to have your pizza delivered by a GPS guided helicopter droid, yes. I bet they would fly like how pizza boys drive though, which would be bad for telephone poles, birds, tall houses, etc.
after landing, the plane went out with its mates, got royally pissed, and managed an altercation with the local constabulary.
Yet another slur on we humble Irish. At least, that's the way I'm going to take it. I'll just point out two things...
a) s/royally/republicanically
b) s/constabulary/gardai.
Typical bloody yank. Not only assumes that Irish stereotypes are correct, but confuses us with the Brits at the same time.
It is arround here:
Latitude N:53d 27.67m
Longitude W: 10d4.20m
To give you a clue where this is:
here
After several thousand years of persistent research and development, we have finally upstaged the carrier pigeon. Too bad that, in the meantime, radio was developed.
Seriously though, it's a great accomplishment. Sure, the military or decent-sized corporation could and have done this without breaking a sweat. Yet the general public has an important role here: pushing technology further ahead. It isn't futile to do things the leaders have already done, because it forces them to keep innovating that much more. Inspiration for all the hobbyists out there!
...
Now that Ireland is clearly within range to launch an UAV attack on the US, we can expect the invasion to happen shortly.
It was rather neat watching the blimp flying around the auditorium and spying on things from the air.
Ever since I saw the thing, I've been wanting to build one.
Hardware, software, and blinking lights!
Is there anything on the law books to prevent or address this possibility?
I recently designed and built an RC plane with my brother. In its nine take-offs it has never landed once (without crashing) and has never flown more than a hundred or so meters. It did embed itself in the golf course though which was quite interesting! Maybe either learning to fly these things first or getting the centre of gravity right would have helped slightly...
I love to see that never-give-up-attitude mixed with electronics. This is like "Rudy" for geeks. Disclaimer: Although this sounds like sarcasm, I really must congratulate these guys. This really is cool!
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= Lost Sheep to Shepard, you got your ears on?
I cant see it surviving the return trip carrying loads of duty free Guiness
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe
Reading some of the commentairies I get the fealing not everybody graps the full level of the achievements made here.
Imagine having to make / design one of these suckers yourself!
what do you need:
Plane (duh)
Controls: GPS, computer, satelite link!, electric controls + receiver, battery etc
fuel!!!: lots of it. its only like 3000 miles or so. (40 hours of flying)
now fit it within these specs to be able to call it a "model airplane":
max 5 kg
max size 2x2 meter
max engine cap. 0.6c
(there are several more limitations)
Hope every one graps the achievement here.
Why are other peoples sig's always more witty ???
> yet all it can say on the site is 'the plane has landed' wheres all the info?
Yeah, they've been wasting their time on the technology and engineering rather than a REALLY COOL website.
Anyway, I'm sure someone reading this forum can donate them a Casio wrist watch running Apache that they can insert right into the plane for live updates.
I believe the landing part was the most impressive of feats whether it was automated by GPS or some smart sensors on the plane and runway brought it down smoothly. I'd like to know more on that.
The second most impressive part is maintaining a constant flight. The general altitude direction are set by a GPS sensor but constantly monitoring the devices, compensating for the temperature and winds, and sending the data back through satellite would be pretty complex. I'd like to know more about the on-board computers and the satellite uplink (and how much that cost).
"Give orange me give eat orange me eat orange give me eat orange give me you." -Nim Chimpsky
hmm, whats to stop anyone making one of these things and kitting it out with an explosive or biological warhead? can radars pick these things out as being targets without seagulls etc. raising false alarms?
Add lots of $$$, make the plane twice as big, add a few extra and more reliable engines, get some redundancy into the electronics and the success rate will be 4 out of 5.
Model aircraft engine $50
As above to JAN spec with testing $15000
Model aircraft fuselage $50
As above, built by Lockheed, say $25000
Home made navigation system $1000
As above, built by Martin Marietta... oh, just make the whole thing a round $100000.
Yes, folks, the threat from model aircraft carrying drugs could kickstart the entire US tech economy, just like Star Wars was going to in the 80s.
Panurge has posted for the last time. Thanks for the positive moderations.
No. just 10 minutes typing a few paragraphs of plain text info would have been enough. there isnt any information on the site bar a handful of pictures and a lame map of the northern atlantic. what route did it take? how far? how long did it take? its a fantastic project- it travelled 3000 miles sucessfully. a few words more than 'we did it' wouldnt have been much work.
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beware he who would deny you access to information, for in his mind he dreams himself your master
This was a great project. I know we've all had daydreams of building autonomous flying machines, and I wonder how many of us have also daydreamed of a small autonomous submersible? I think that a tiny submarine would be just as exciting to see cross the Atlantic although a bit slower.
The primary benefit of a vehicle that uses the water as its transport mechanism is that it can't crash! It could stay a few dozen meters below the surface for optimum travel speed and emerge from the water at intervals to update its position by GPS and wire that and other data such as temperature, atmospheric pressure, wind speed, and the like back to the crew on land.
Once nice side effect of traveling in such a dense medium is that a great deal of instrumentation weight would be okay since it's easy to make things float in water. The same cannot be said of the air! That means it might be possible to use a device like a gyroscope to keep track of heading while under the surface. Try loading something like that onto an RC airplane and you'll need some big wings.
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
Damn it.= 1
http://www.arrl.org/news/stories/2002/08/21/2/?nc
Sig Applied For
You mean they're not the same???? OMG!!! WTF?!? ASL?
Ceci n'est pas une sig.
Thats 1 in 5 across the North Atlantic, aslong as you avoid Hurricane Season, the Carribean is a lot nicer.
Plus, from a ship in the ocean flying inland it should be a whole lot easier.
And maybe when they've had some sleep, maybe they will update it. It has only landed in the last 6h or so. Give 'em a day or two to get to the press details.
Complexity is Easy. Simplicity is Hard.
In the vein of cool remotely controlled space thingees please don't overlook the Lunokhod 1. The Russians sent this 2000 pound robot to the lunar surface in 1970. It explored the surface of the moon for 11 months controlled by a team from the earth. Pretty ass kicking if you ask me.
There's a lot more info on this usenet thread
According to that article (National Geographic) the engine is a four-stroke with 10cc's of displaced volume. Wow, I didn't realize they made 4 stroke engines that small.
Semper ubi sub ubi
I think it's cool anyways. As a side note, in the mid-80's (when i was about 12), i often fantasized about building a self-navigating submarine that would power itself from the Oregon Coast to Tokyo. Drew up all sorts of plans and everything, have the thing all engineered out. I should dig those plans out of wherever they are and take a serious look at them again... hrmm.....
do() || do_not();
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)
There are a whole bunch of people who have been training for just such a scenario for years...
:)
Ask anyone who plays Quake 3 (or your favorite FPS) with a high ping time if this would really be any different
Understanding is a three edged sword. - Ambassador Kosh Naranek, Babylon 5
Really, scary. Things that small can be produced in huge quantities (like billions of mobile phones arond, old and new). Automated production lines, plastic stamped frames, etc.
Now image the same thing with a gun and human detector -- infrared, motion recognition, shape recognition, AND BLOODY NETWORKED with several thousands others in single launch!
Instant weapon of mass killing while perfectly legal under current international law, and available only to high-tech and economically powerful country, i.e. U.S...
Given the current trend of messing around the world this is going to be the next method of killing people around and forcing american policy without risking american lives.
The US Air Force has had one for 2 years now. Completely robotic, tipping the distance scale at 13,840 KM (8,600 miles), and above all else, it's utilitarian. The USAF plane is a fully featured spy plane. Sorry TAM, but you just don't measure up to this bad boy.
The chains are broken
Loki is free
Ragnarok is at hand...
Yes. When interviewed, TAM-5 had this to say:
Q: Now that you've become the first robot to fly over the Atlantic, what would you like to say to the public:
TAM-5: I am here to protect you. I am here to protect you from the Terrible Secret of Space. Are there stairs in your house?
seven two six five
seven four six one seven
two six four two e
The main differences from traditional RC hobbyists were the onboard telemetry system, and the means of getting some of these models launched.
One of the primary programs in which I participated involved the use of a sailplane model. Rather than launching from a big slingshot, like most hobbyists, we modified an Eagle-style RC trainer with a mount to carry the sailplane, and we literally flew the stacked planes up to altitude using the powered model for thrust, then did an inflight separation (somewhat like Enterprise shuttle coming off the top of a 747 during very early shuttle program tests).
Also, the NASA folks had a pretty interesting telemetry (remote data collection) setup, which reversed the conventional use of a stock RC radio. The transmitter was mounted in the airplane, and the control sticks taken apart and hooked up to various sensors, and the receiver was on the ground, with the servos hooked up to pens on paper rolls. That way, whenever the onboard sensors moved, the pens also moved. A poor-man's remote sensing system, for just a few hundred dollars!
The results of this work have shown up in many places - from sailplane wing design to general-aviation stall prevention devices to high-visibility X-plane programs.
Granted, in 1989 when I did this work, autonomous flight was rare, and we did all this work by piloted remote control, but my point is that it was done for just hundreds of dollars per model, not multiple thousands. Yes, the government sometimes DOES save money.
--Brandon / Split Infinity Music
"TAMs numbered one through four were not entirely successful. This one worked."
"You see! You SEE?! Your stupid minds! STUPID! STUPID!"
If Nalgene water bottles are outlawed, only outlaws will have Nalgene water bottles.
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.
After 5 attempts, Mary Tyler Moore's hat finally crosses the Atlantic.
Not that it's equipped to cross the atlantic but it's a start http://www.huv.com/uSeeker/
Acutally I believe the TAM site states that this is a modified OS .61 4 Stroke motor modified with a sparkplug to run on a custom fuel mixture.
This is a piston engine propeller driven RC plane.
"Doctor, it's not the voices I hear in MY head, but the voices I hear in YOUR head that really frighten me."
Yeah it's true. I saw it happen. The Harelip got angry at him for puking on her back after drinking too many Coors at happy hour. She chased him out of the Arvada Tavern with a pool cue. He hopped on his banana-seat bike and took off like a bat out of hell. I don't know if he shit himself or if he was just plastered (maybe both), but he definitely was swerving around a lot. Some blonde yuppie girl in a Ford Expedition (undoubtedly on her cell phone) broadsided him. He died instantly.
When does NASA get to study the rock samples that will come back? Honestly, we could use some good alcohol samples too. It's been a long day at the office, and it feels like Friday already.
only in america would this get modded up as insightful...
WAIT!!!stop... sorry
only in america would someone even think of this and post it, i think Michale Moore said it best in bowling for columbine "america a nation afraid, a nation made afraid, a nation of fear"
The More Knowledge you have the Luckier you Get- J.R. Ewing
... take-off and landing were human assisted. Now get coding and see if you can make it take-off and land on it's own.
"Consensus" in science is _always_ a political construct.
CBC Radio's "As It Happens" has a Real Audio interview with one of the team members. It's about 15 minutes into the first part of the show.
"On Saturday, an American team launched a model airplane from Cape Spear, Newfoundland. And today that plane landed successfully in Ireland. It marks the longest distance - 3020km - ever travelled by a model airplane - and over the Atlantic no less. Les Hamilton is part of the Maryland team behind the launch of the plane. We've reached him in St. John's, Newfoundland."
you're kidding! I never know what to believe on that place, or this one, either. Is there a link to the obit?
Check out my sysadmin blog!
Yeah, I was kidding. But notice that the page said the "Filthy Critic" died, not "Matt Weatherford". I suspect he's just tired of doing reviews.
hmmm...good point. The main page says RIP, so it's probably just the char, like you said. Excelent write though, on the previous post :)
Check out my sysadmin blog!
I think the "editors" might be coders more than journalists..."
Sleep is for the Weak
The public is not cleared for this information! Do you want Jesse Ventrua* to visit you in the middle of the night all dress in black and with a .45 with a silencer in his hand!?!?!?!
(X-Files reference, dudes)