The TAM site has finally done it. After years of planning those
plucky guys have finally flown an 11 pound autonomous model accross
1950 miles of the Atlantic ocean between the US and Ireland.
Maynard Hill and his team have been working at this for some years,
culminating in 4 previous failed attempts. The ethos of using cost
effective off-the-shelf hardware with home-built planes and in house
written software has meant that the team have been happy(?) to kiss
each plane goodbye.
This year they came armed with 4 full planes and were sucessful
on the second attempt, TAM4 having made only around 750 miles a few
days previously.
An operator manually launched and trimmed the plane before
engaging the autopilot software. Guided by GPS, the plane flew towards
Ireland and updated the ground crews via Satellite uplink.
On arrival in ireland an operator took control and landed the plane.
In all the crossing by the 5 foot span plane took around 42
hours, so it’s not fast by any means. Read more about it here at the TAM site.
Article by TurboTas