Ian Curtis
23-11-2011, 19:35
The Rutan Voyager (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rutan_Voyager) was the first airplane to fly non-stop around the world and it was built by a chronically underfunded small team. (Sound familiar? :))
It took nearly 2.7 miles to get off the ground. As a point of comparison, a 747 takes a little under 2 miles to reach 50 feet above the ground fully loaded with full thrust.
In honor of the upcoming 25th anniversary of the flight, EAA has posted a video of the airplane's take off. Since the airplane had made so many compromises for its extreme range, its handling qualities, structural margins and systems were described by the pilot as "a terrible airplane ... [we] had to make those compromises to achieve the 29,000-mile range."
The takeoff video is exciting, you can see the wingtips actually drag on the ground for a significant part of the roll. They comment in retrospect this was actually kind of a good thing -- the wing had a nasty habit of dynamically oscillating (BAD!) (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kQI3AWpTWhM) during the takeoff roll.
It took nearly 2.7 miles to get off the ground. As a point of comparison, a 747 takes a little under 2 miles to reach 50 feet above the ground fully loaded with full thrust.
In honor of the upcoming 25th anniversary of the flight, EAA has posted a video of the airplane's take off. Since the airplane had made so many compromises for its extreme range, its handling qualities, structural margins and systems were described by the pilot as "a terrible airplane ... [we] had to make those compromises to achieve the 29,000-mile range."
The takeoff video is exciting, you can see the wingtips actually drag on the ground for a significant part of the roll. They comment in retrospect this was actually kind of a good thing -- the wing had a nasty habit of dynamically oscillating (BAD!) (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kQI3AWpTWhM) during the takeoff roll.