RECORD-SETTING TRANSATLANTIC FLIGHT

1,882 miles on less than 1 gallon of fuel

MAYNARD THE MAN

If you know anything about Maynard Hill, then you know that he has been setting records with RC models since 1963 when he snatched the altitude record from the Soviet Union. On july 5, 1963, he almost doubled it with an altitude of 13,328 feet. From then on, Maynard was hooked, and he has since set 22 other records for distance, duration and altitude. If the FAI certifies this Atlantic crossing as a record, then Maynard will have a total of 25 records to his credit.

Born in 1926 in Pennsylvania, Maynard has been building model planes since his youth. In college, he trained as a metallurgist, and several years ago, he retired from Johns Hopkins University's Applied Physics Laboratory as a robotic airplane expert. He's also a past president of the Academy of Model Aeronautics (AMA) and the Society for Technical Aeromodel Research (STAR). The idea of flying an RC model across the Atlantic occurred to Maynard 20 years ago, and he has actively pursued it since 1998. A lot of the data garnered for the crossing was accumulated from his many long-distance, cross-country flights. What's really remarkable is that Maynard is hearing-impaired and legally blind. To make his building chores a little easier to see, Maynard buys a red dye from Bob Smith Industries that he uses to color his CA a dark magenta.

In the beginning, Maynard thought that flying a model 2,000 miles in 40 hours would be relatively easy. "But the longer we worked at it, the harder I realized it was. It's almost a miracle that we made it all the way," related Maynard afrom his Maryland home. His first plan was to follow the model in a yacht and guide it from there, but he soon concluded that the cost of the yacht-and sufficient beer for his friends to drink during the crossing-would be prohibitive. Maynard is obviously someone who never gives up on a goal!

Thirty-eight hours and counting: members of the Irish landing team scanned the clouds and anxiously checked their watches, as the minutes seemed to drag. They were afraid that the model-along with their hopes for a record-setting flight-had crashed into the Atlantic only a few miles from its destination. Landing pilot and AMA president Dave Brown remembers, "At one point, our instruments began telling us that the aircraft was inexplicably diving and climbing 100 feet at a time, and then we lost contact with it."

Just 19 minutes later, the simple balsa-and-ply aircraft came into view, right on target. In a telephone interview, Dave noted, "A great cheer went up when we saw it, and four minutes later, I landed it in the field. It was so thrilling!" When asked about the significance of this record-setting journey, Dave paused, and then remembered that after the aircraft had landed, two young boys came over to check it out. "Wow! That's a pretty simple model; even we could build an airplane like that!"

Those young would-be modelers had summed it up: the accomplishment wasn't necessarily the fact that it had flown across the ocean, but that it had inspired and invited future generations to pursue their goals and push the limits.

TAM 5 (Trans Atlantic Model), nicknamed "The Spirit of Butts Farm," is an unusual name for any aircraft, let alone an RC model. What this model achieved is also unusual: it flew nonstop across the Atlantic Ocean, fulfilling a 20-year dream of Maynard Hill and a dedicated team of believers. Hand-launched by Maynard and piloted by Joe Foster, on August 9, 2003, at 7:45 p.m. (local time) from Cape Spear, Newfoundland, the model flew a distance of 1,882.3 miles in 38 hours and 52 minutes before being landed in Clifden, County Galway, Ireland, on August 11 at 2:08 p.m. (local time) by AMA President Dave Brown, thus completing a flight of historic proportions.

How does one go about designing an RC model that, in addition to having the endurance and stability to fly unassisted by human input, still meets the stringent guidelines set down by the Federation Aeronautique Internationale (PAI) to qualify as a record-setting flight? That was one of the many questions I asked Maynard when I visited him in late September for an in-depth look at TAM S.

TAM 5-THE MODEL

To submit the flight as a record attempt, the model had to meet FAI criteria, and Maynard's approach to this was simple. The plane could have a maximum weight of 11 pounds fueled and a wingspan of around 72 inches. The engine could displace no more than lOcc, and Maynard uses 1980's vintage O.S. .61 4-stroke engines. The model uses very traditional free-flight construction methods for both light weight and strength. As an example, the wing weighs only 1.1 pounds yet it can sustain more than 3G. The model has no landing gear (excess weight and drag) and uses only one aileron (In the left panel). The tail feathers are of open-bay construction and are removable. To further reduce weight, the vertical fin doesn't have a movable rudder, and the entire model is covered with transparent red MonoKote.