Rutan Voyager Take Off (first airplane round the world non-stop)

[Ian Curtis]

The 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!) during the takeoff roll.

[Tristan Lall]

Originally Posted by Ian Curtis

The 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!) during the takeoff roll.

They actually snapped off the winglets in-flight, because they'd been damaged during the takeoff roll.

And incidentally, flutter is probably the most uniformly hazardous part of a flight test program. It's hard to model computationally, so to identify it, you have to fly the aircraft while incrementally increasing speed and watching for vibrations. (Flutter testing is generally the only time when test pilots of commercial airliners wear parachutes.)

[Al Skierkiewicz]

Anyone who has a chance to get close to the fuselage or to walk up to a full size mockup needs to see what Burt and Jeanna had to endure for 9 days. Just the inability to sleep made the journey hazardous but seeing the cramped conditions made me feel sorry for complaining about a 12 hour bus ride to Atlanta.

[Don Wright]

n honor of the upcoming 25th anniversary of the flight, EAA has posted a video of the airplane's take off.

Link?

[Al Skierkiewicz]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ofw2dgGyHE8

The song playing behind some of the video has an offensive word, it is referenced in the opening tag.

[Ian Curtis]

Oops!

This is the one I meant to post, it looks to be straight from the VHS tape.