Cross-country R/C through nine tunnels

Model Airplane News, Nov 1999 by Hill, Maynard

There are nine tunnels between the cities of Turin and Pedaso in Italy. Gian Aghem, an Italian aeromodeler and famous record-buster, set a world record for cross-country distance with a piston-powered R/C model by chasing his model through them in a convertible. This was Gian's 16th FAI world record for aeromodels. As the crow flies, the distance-which is what counts-is 546 kilometers (339 miles); the curving road is about 390 miles long.

This part of Italy, which runs along the Adriatic Sea, is not mountainous but somewhat corrugated, like a washboard. The highway engineers decided it would be cheaper to bore tunnels through the hills than to build a serpentine route full of horseshoe curves to surmount the steep 200- to 600-foot slopes.

So, how was this tunnel stuff done? When the FAI rules committee decided to allow an assistant pilot to relieve the chief pilot during cross-country flights, Gian snapped to attention. His 15-year-old son, Marco, was already a highly skilled R/C pilot who had won first place in the Italian R/C Glider and Electric Championships two years in a row. Now he could beat Australian Peter Garoni's record, which-- not to diminish Garoni's achievement-occurred over much easier topography. Garoni flew his record flight in the south-central region of Australia known as the "Null Arbor Plain." That translates to "No trees!" What's more, there is nothing there besides sand, and I am told that there is a road nearly 200 miles long, straight as an arrow with no hills! Paradise for cross-country R/C!

Gian gathered a crew of three people for each of two cabriolets (Italian for convertible). The driver and radio communicator of each car did double duty as official observers. For the flight's first 250 kilometers, Gian piloted the plane along the highway from Turin to Bologna, a road he had used a year earlier to set the record that Garoni broke. In that earlier record, he had flown northeast out of Bologna. He couldn't use that road this time because in addition to some badly mountainous territory, it reached the border of Yugoslavia short of the distance needed to set a record. So, out of Bologna, the party turned southeast on the Via Pasedo Highway.

At the first tunnel, Gian's driver stopped on the berm outside the entrance. Gian circled the model overhead, while Marco's driver proceeded through the tunnel and stopped on the berm on the other side. As soon as Marco established radio contact, Gian flew the model over the top of the hill as far as was safe for him to visually control it. As soon as Marco saw the model, the teams counted down to switch off Gian's transmitter and switch on Marco's. Marco then flew the model down from the top of the hill and circled overhead until his dad's car came through the tunnel. Then they counted down again and switched again before rolling on down the highway to the next tunnel. They repeated this nine times. What fun! What excitement! What risks! One bad radio command or traffic jam, and all would have been lost. This R/C hand-off might be easy when you're standing next to each other at the field, but try it using only radio contact over / mile away! It is nerve-racking and hazardous.

This record-breaking flight started at Turin at 10:25 a.m. and ended at the predesignated spot near Pedaso at 5:18 p.m. The car's ground speed was between 54 and 68mph (90 to 110kph). There was only a little wind, mostly from helpful directions. Some of the tunnels were curved inside the hill, so Gian sometimes had to park the model in orbit not dead ahead of the entry. In the order encountered, here is a listing of the length of all nine tunnels: 640 feet, 320 feet, 480 feet, 960 feet, 1,440 feet, 960 feet, 2,950 feet, 700 feet and 2,560 feet. To pass all these obstacles with no foul-ups was a remarkable accomplishment. You almost forget that the model had to keep going for seven hours of regular flying!

The Aghem family team's record has since been surpassed: once by Ron Clem of California (427 miles), once by my team (457 miles) and again by Ron Clem, who holds the current record at 517 miles. The Aghem family team would doubtless like to overtake Ron Clem, but as Gian says, this is impossible in Italy. The next tunnel down the road from Pedaso is 4.5 kilometers, or 14,400 feet long. No human eye can see a model well enough to pilot it from a distance of 7,200 feet-3,000 feet is stretching it for most sharp-eyed pilots. There are probably no other similarly tunneled roads anywhere in the world, so it is quite safe to say that the family's nine-tunnel record will never be broken!