The history of transatlantic aviation reached a new milestone yesterday when a 4.9-kilogram model airplane completed a 3,040-kilometre flight from Cape Spear, Nfld., to Ireland.
It is the first successful Atlantic crossing by a "true" model airplane, according to the group of enthusiasts from Maryland who built and launched the aircraft.
Just after 10 p.m. Saturday, Maynard Hill, a retired metallurgist from Maryland who has set a number of model-airplane records, launched the aircraft he had designed from Cape Spear, the most easterly point in North America.
The craft -- 1.8 metres long, with an almost matching wingspan -- landed 38½ hours later at Mannin Beach in western Ireland, just over 10 metres from where it was expected to land, said Joe Foster, a member of the team who worked on the project for about five years.
"It made it, and that was the goal," he said, adding that the plane was reported to be in excellent condition and could be flown again.
"I think [this record]will be incredibly difficult to break."
The team was on "pins and needles" yesterday morning waiting to hear whether the plane had landed safely, he said. After the craft did not get the tail winds that were expected, the team worried that it might run out of fuel.
"We calculated enough fuel for 38 hours," Mr. Foster said, adding that the plane had just 51.1 millilitres of fuel when it landed -- enough for about 40 more minutes of flight.
The aircraft was named the Spirit of Butts Farm after long-time aviation enthusiast Beecher Butts, who allowed the team to do much of its testing on his Maryland farm. It weighed just under five kilograms at takeoff and about 2.6 kilograms when it landed.
After guiding the model airplane to its cruising altitude, Mr. Hill put it on autopilot and waited anxiously for it to make its journey. The aircraft, equipped with miniature onboard computers, was tracked and monitored through data relayed by satellites.
Once it neared Ireland, another member of the team took manual control of the aircraft and landed it.
The plane, made of balsa wood and Mylar fabric, has a tiny engine that runs on Coleman stove fuel. It flew across the ocean at an altitude of about 300 metres, said Carl Layden, a Newfoundland model maker connected with the project.
At that altitude, the path is clear because no airplanes fly that low and ships' masts do not reach that high.
The plane generally cruises at about 70 kilometres an hour, but tailwinds boost its speed, Mr. Layden said.
Because a storm over the North Atlantic could mean the end of such a small craft, he said the team tracked weather patterns for the past couple of years to aid forecasting.
"The North Atlantic is very treacherous."
The hobby's governing body, Fédération Aéronautique Internationale, will verify that the plane set a world record for straight-line distance by a "true" model airplane.
The FAI specifies that such a model airplane can weigh no more than five kilograms and have an engine no larger than 10 cubic centimetres.
Yesterday's record is the 25th that Mr. Hill has broken, Mr. Foster said.
A builder of model airplanes since his youth, Mr. Hill has set -- and still holds -- several altitude, distance and duration records for model planes.
Mr. Hill, who worked for several years at Johns Hopkins University's Applied Physics Laboratory, is in his late 70s and is both legally blind and hard of hearing. He dyes his airplane glue red so he can see it, Mr. Layden said.
"He is to model aviation what Gordie Howe is to hockey," he said.
Mr. Hill was "totally overwhelmed with emotion" when he learned of yesterday's successful landing.
He had tried the transatlantic flight four times before.
The Spirit of Butts Farm flew a route yesterday that is historic in aviation. In June of 1919, Britain's John Alcock and Arthur Whitten Brown, flew the same route in the first non-stop transatlantic flight.