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Toys Science

TAM 5 Has landed 219

Posted by Hemos from the the-little-plane-that-could dept.
bzant writes "TAM 5 The model airplane, (see our previous story), has successfully landed in Ireland. This was the second plane they launched. Other than some slow speeds and a concern over a lean fuel mixture the flight seemed to go as planned."
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TAM 5 Has landed More

TAM 5 Has landed

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  • Help us out a little (Score:4, Insightful)

    by mao che minh ( 611166 ) * on Monday August 11, 2003 @09:12AM (#6665150) Journal
    Alluding to the fact that there was a previous article isn't enough. The TAM5 link is a map and a bunch of coordinates - what is all of this? The "previous story" linked too turns around and links to yet two previous stories.

    At least give your audience a brief two sentence re-cap, state the goal of the endeavor, and give a reason why we should click the link (it's commonly refferred to as a "blurb" in journalism). Slashdot is now popular (and commercial) enough to have editors that can at least follow the basics of journalism. You are making OSDN look bad. Step up and be big boys, for Christ's sake.

  • Wow (Score:2, Funny)

    by Quasar1999 ( 520073 )
    That's impressive. Now when are they launching a radio controlled rocket to the moon? Obviously it's the next step.

    • Re:Wow (Score:4, Funny)

      by DataCannibal ( 181369 ) on Monday August 11, 2003 @09:26AM (#6665293) Journal
      Nope, the next step is to kidnap the baby of the guy who flew the thing. Using a remote control getaway car, of course

    • Re:Wow (Score:3, Informative)

      by AllUsernamesAreGone ( 688381 )
      That's a LOT harder than you'd think. Even over interplanetary distances there is a lag between transmission and reception that can be potentially catastrophic - radio waves can only travel at c, so as the distance to your radio controlled toy increases you get corresponding increases in the time taken to get a signal to or from it. In the case of the moon, you have:

      Distance between the moon and earth(d): 384,500 km
      Speed of light(c): 299,792,458 m/s
      d / c = 1.283 seconds

      So you end up sending a signal and a
      • So you end up sending a signal and a second later your rocket/whatever responds.

        They didn't fly this plane like that...it was mostly automous. They got progress updates from it now and again. They lost touch for quite a long time and almost gave up on it at one point.

      • Re:Wow (Score:3, Interesting)

        by paradesign ( 561561 )
        the anime movie, Hoshe no Koe (sp?) aka Voice of a Distant Star deals with this. Two friends are separated over a growing distance as they attempt to keep their relationship going. its quite touching. The time it takes their text messages to reach eachother grows longer and longer. definately worth watching.

    • NASA [nasa.org] did that with the Ranger-probes [nasa.gov] from 1961 onwards. They meet with success on the 31 July 1964 at 13:25:49 UT with Ranger 7 [nasa.gov]. Off course, the ruskies was first out, crashing their Luna E-1A, which hardlanded on the moon on 14 September 1959.

      As for some amateurs to do the same, I think that is a few years away at the best. For one thing, no amateurbuilt rocket has yet reached orbit, allthought several groups, like the norwegian NEAR [www.near.no] has it as a stated project [www.near.no].

    • I know you are joking, but I think many people get the wrong idea of this project. The model airplane was not radio controlled, it flew on its own using a set of pre-defined waypoints. It did transmit data to the people involved in the project, but it didn't recieve any instructions.
    • Obviously it's the next step.

      How so? The TAM-5 was not radio-controlled. It flew autonomously.
    • No, the next step is this [darpa.mil], from the folks who brought you TIA, the Policy Analysis Market... and the Internet. (If it's down, try the Google cache [216.239.39.104] instead.

      Remainder of my .sig: be the majority of voters.

  • Congratulations! (Score:5, Insightful)

    by martingunnarsson ( 590268 ) <martin&snarl-up,com> on Monday August 11, 2003 @09:16AM (#6665186) Homepage
    This is really a cool project, and while it might seem like a geeky hobby thing, I think it's much more important than that. I think we'll se R/C helicopters that move around on their own used for surveillance and as a support for police and firefighters pretty soon. I mean, these things already exist. The flight over the ocean shows that they can handle long distance flights as well, at lest in 50% of the cases :-)

    • R/C Vehicles (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Jennifer E. Elaan ( 463827 )
      I saw this nifty R/C blimp at a tradeshow once. It was about 3 feet long. It could be moved in all three axis, and was perfectly content hovering as well. It broadcasted an image from an underbelly camera to a standard TV channel.

      It was rather neat watching the blimp flying around the auditorium and spying on things from the air.

      Ever since I saw the thing, I've been wanting to build one.

      • The problem with blimps is that they are very wind sensitive. If you want to use one outdoors it should be really calm, or you can end up chasing your blimp all over town. Indoors however, they are really cool. If you have a somewhat small blimp or a big room.
        • There are ways to overcome this problem. Between using an aerodynamic shape for the gasbag and larger fans, a miniblimp is quite capable of outdoor operation.

          The one that I really like is the internal-rotor helicopter-style design. I actually helped someone test some ideas for one of these. We took a plastic toy propeller (from those pull-string toys), and attached it to a Dremel rotary tool. Fire the thing up to 15,000 RPM, and it rapidly lifted the tool, which was being held down by the AC cord.

          If

    • Re:Congratulations! (Score:4, Informative)

      by tramm ( 16077 ) <hudson@swcp.com> on Monday August 11, 2003 @09:49AM (#6665478) Homepage
      martingunnarsson wrote:
      This is really a cool project, and while it might seem like a geeky hobby thing, I think it's much more important than that. I think we'll se R/C helicopters that move around on their own [...]
      Like autopilot.sourceforge.net [sourceforge.net]? It is a Free Software autopilot for RC helicopters that has successfully flown for several km and been adapted to numerous different helicopter models. Rotomotion, LLC [rotomotion.com] builds a commercial UAV based on the software and also sells kits for more technically inclined users of the software.
      The flight over the ocean shows that they can handle long distance flights as well, at lest in 50% of the cases :-)
      Although TAM5 was a fixed wing, not a rotorcraft, and the success rate was more like 20% (1 out of 5)...

  • Amazing (Score:5, Informative)

    by arvindn ( 542080 ) on Monday August 11, 2003 @09:20AM (#6665228) Homepage Journal

    http://tam.plannet21.com/FAQs.htm#leader

    Who is the leader of this project?

    Maynard Hill is an American, born in Pennsylvania in 1926. He has been an avid modeler all his life. He has contributed technical advances through his 23 world records. He has contributed as President of the AMA and delegate to international model airplane meetings. Maynard has designed and contructed all the models for this project in spite of the fact that he is legally blind and nearly deaf. Apart from the goal of setting a new record for straight line distance, one of Maynard's objectives is to demonstrate that people with handicaps can overcome them.

    • Good work on his part then. Too bad he can't see any of his acheivements though.

      • Re:Amazing (Score:2, Informative)

        by ebacon ( 16101 )
        Good work on his part then. Too bad he can't see any of his acheivements though.

        Not necessarily so. Maynard Hill is legally blind, which may simply mean he can't see well enough to drive. It certainly doesn't mean he can't see at all.
    • Maynard has designed and contructed all the models for this project in spite of the fact that he is legally blind and nearly deaf.

      Actually, legally blind isn't as bad as you're thinking. When someone says they're blind, it generally means that they can't see. When they say they're legally blind, that generally means that they can't see without some amazingly thick glasses. I had a roommate (Hi, Jon) who is legally blind. He reads, drives, and whatever else he needs to do. He just wears his glasses if he w

      • Not even so. With high-index lenses, correcting the vision of someone who is "legally blind" isn't all that problematic, assuming normal myopia/astigmatism/whatever.

        Of course, actual glass lenses would be quite thick, probably leading to the "coke-bottle" effect.

        They'd also weigh a *lot* -- imagine the pressure of two thick lenses pressing down on the bridge of your nose constantly.

        Now, there are degenerative conditions which can prevent correction of eyesight in those so afflicted. However, since the si

      • Legally Blind (Score:3, Informative)

        by morven2 ( 5718 ) *
        in most areas means significant, UNCORRECTIBLE vision problems that are severe enough to be somewhat disabling.

        If someone who is 'legally blind' is driving, then one of two things is the case. Either he's not truly deserving of the status, OR he shouldn't be on the road. Probably the latter. Someone who's 'legally blind' should not be able to pass the vision exam to drive, even with corrective lenses, but unfortunately cheating the vision exam in most US states at least is quite easy -- one can just mem

    • Re:Amazing (Score:3, Informative)

      by _Upsilon_ ( 97438 )
      I live in Newfoundland, and was actually there at some of the launches (including the one that made it) and have talked to Mr. Hill.

      He gave an interview to a local newspaper here last summer, and part of it was about his handicaps. It mentioned that in order for him to glue the planes together, he had to put some bright red dye in the glue so that he could see it.

      Glad to see that they made it this time.

    • Re:Amazing (Score:4, Funny)

      by Fear the Clam ( 230933 ) on Monday August 11, 2003 @05:26PM (#6670187)
      Yeah, but can he play pinball?

  • Good Job. (Score:3, Interesting)

    by ianjk ( 604032 ) on Monday August 11, 2003 @09:22AM (#6665250)
    It is nice to see that they finally made it.

    Now, can they make it all the way around?
    • Forget around the world - i'm guessing they probably couldn't make it back across.

      i dont understand the 'telemetry data' from that one page very much (is it a snapshot of the last known position, or an aggregate of the whole flight?), but consider this: they claim 68 km / h. That's consistent with my guess that the airplane, on a windless day, cruises at about 20-30mph. The problem is that going westbound, you are highly unlikely NOT to find at least someplace (at any altitude) that will give you a mass

  • Nooooooo! (Score:2, Funny)

    by grug0 ( 696014 )
    Now the leprechauns can escape to other countries!

  • great for drug/weapon smuggling (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward

    now we know how to get 1-2kilos of cocaine or some of those lovely anthrax/botulism spores from USA to Ireland, iam sure the IRA will be most pleased at the developments there now
    we have a nice non-radar detectable transporation method thats cheap and capable, nothing like a practical application of long distance remote controlled (cheap) devices for terrorists
    • Getting 1-2kg of stuff across the ocean would still be an accomplishment for this plane, since it only weighs 5kg including fuel. Making it profitable would miraculous, given how much this team spent on the effort.
    • In Soviet Russia we use model airplanes to make drugs get high.
    • You can use off the shelf model planes (or boats maybe?) if that is all you want to do. Launch them out off the coast line and just let them make their way into Miami or some similar place. With a slight bit of hacking you could do this yourself.

      I think a submersible boat would be harder to detect than a plane. It could stick up an antenea to get it's GPS coords and use sonar to look for things it might bump into.. and just land itself on some beach and send out a signal to alert it's collector where to fi

  • Just the beginning (Score:4, Funny)

    by ch-chuck ( 9622 ) on Monday August 11, 2003 @09:26AM (#6665295) Homepage
    This is great news, but like all pioneering events, it's just the beginning of a brave new future. Someday, regularly scheduled model airplane flights over the Atlantic, as well as to other destinations, will be a commonplace occurance. In the future, everyone will have unmaned aerial vehicle service available right in their backyards. Soon, inexpensive GPS programmable reusable UAV's with automatic colision avoidance will be available to anyone for less than the price of an automobile at stores everywhere.

  • Fantastic (Score:5, Interesting)

    by cybermace5 ( 446439 ) <g.ryan@macetech.com> on Monday August 11, 2003 @09:36AM (#6665383) Homepage Journal
    After several thousand years of persistent research and development, we have finally upstaged the carrier pigeon. Too bad that, in the meantime, radio was developed.

    Seriously though, it's a great accomplishment. Sure, the military or decent-sized corporation could and have done this without breaking a sweat. Yet the general public has an important role here: pushing technology further ahead. It isn't futile to do things the leaders have already done, because it forces them to keep innovating that much more. Inspiration for all the hobbyists out there!
    • Sure, the military or decent-sized corporation could and have done this without breaking a sweat.

      oh.
      ya.
      sure.. they wouldnt have broken a sweat.
      INSTEAD
      they would have throwing millions (if not billions) of tax/stock holder dollars at only to reazlize.. hey!! this is useless (from a military/civilian POV) but kudos to these guys.. jolly good show

  • When does the invasion begin? (Score:5, Funny)

    by DrXym ( 126579 ) on Monday August 11, 2003 @09:41AM (#6665412)
    Now that Ireland is clearly within range to launch an UAV attack on the US, we can expect the invasion to happen shortly.
  • I recently designed and built an RC plane with my brother. In its nine take-offs it has never landed once (without crashing) and has never flown more than a hundred or so meters. It did embed itself in the golf course though which was quite interesting! Maybe either learning to fly these things first or getting the centre of gravity right would have helped slightly...

  • Somehow (Score:5, Funny)

    by Timesprout ( 579035 ) on Monday August 11, 2003 @09:51AM (#6665495)
    I cant see it surviving the return trip carrying loads of duty free Guiness
    • its spelt "guinness": and how many times do we have to tell you bloody foreigners... IT DOESNT TRAVEL!!! ;-)
      • It's spelled "Guinness." I always love when the spelling corrections on Slashdot are wrong.
      • Well, seeing as Guinness is no longer made in Ireland, it's a bit of a moot point.
        • -1 troll

          it is made in almost every country in the world now granted, but i guarantee you the stuff i drink comes from St. James gate, Dublin.

          i had Namibian-brewed Guinness once (in South Africa), and lets just say that although Namibia was the first country to recycle their toilet water, they were not the first to get it right... yuck!

      • You've got my curiosity, so I'll ask a possibly stupid question -- what do you mean? Does something related to travel (vibration, aging, etc.) cause the quality of Guinness to suffer?

        Oh, and greetings from across the pond.
        • its actually a big farce... the further south you go in Ireland, the better the Guinness tastes; but only because the water gets creamer the more southerly you go, and any lardlord (worth their weight in piss) waters down their beers. hence creamier Guinness in Cork, and tangy crisp in Belfast.

          i can only tell you by experience, that its just not the same if you're not in ireland. i wont even drink scottish Guinness. a lot of it has to do with how the pint is poured (people drinking it and the drink is movin

          • Being American leaves me at a disadvantage here, as I can't say I have a developed appreciation for the art of serving ale.

            I've only had Guinness from bottles -- I avoid bars, since too many Americans consider bars a place to go slug back as much alcohol as possible, and don't really take the time to appreciate what they're drinking. Of course, bars try to capitalize on this idea by employing the most attractive bartenders they can. The more you drink, the easier it is to convince yourself to relax and enj

  • Hell of an achievement. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by dr.Flake ( 601029 ) on Monday August 11, 2003 @09:52AM (#6665517)
    Reading some of the commentairies I get the fealing not everybody graps the full level of the achievements made here.

    Imagine having to make / design one of these suckers yourself!

    what do you need:

    Plane (duh)
    Controls: GPS, computer, satelite link!, electric controls + receiver, battery etc
    fuel!!!: lots of it. its only like 3000 miles or so. (40 hours of flying)

    now fit it within these specs to be able to call it a "model airplane":
    max 5 kg
    max size 2x2 meter
    max engine cap. 0.6c
    (there are several more limitations)

    Hope every one graps the achievement here.

    • Re:Hell of an achievement. (Score:5, Informative)

      by zelbinion ( 442226 ) on Monday August 11, 2003 @10:38AM (#6666029)
      Mod the parent up. This is an amazing accomplishment.

      As a R/C modeler myself, the specs of this plane are basically what I learned to fly on. Think: standard trainer with an O.S. 61 engine. This sort of plane can typically fly about 20 minutes on a tank of gas, and never more than about 800 feet in altitude, and never more than about a mile and half away. Things you have to worry about are:

      1. Running out of gas.
      2. Having the temperature conditions change the performance of the engine, causing it to stall. (It is not uncommon to tweak the fuel mixture on a model airplane on nearly every flight through an afternoon of flying.)
      3. Such a small plane is susceptible to fairly small gusts of wind that can make if fly off-course, flip it upside down, etc. Anything more than about 15mph wind, and most model airplanes get tricky to fly. Especially if it is gusty (i.e. not a constant wind speed/direction)
      4. Battery life - standard R/C batteries will last for about 2-4 hours max.
      5. There is no way to restart the motor if it quits
      6. Things can (and often do) come apart in flight. These things are made of balsa wood and heat-shrink coating. I've had planes explode in flight, wings come off, tails come off, etc.

      Now, take a model airplane that is only about 5 feet long and with a wing span of 6 feet, and operates as described above, and modify it so that it can:

      1. Fly continuously for 40 hours.
      2. Fly through day and night in a variety of temperature and moisture conditions and not have the engine quit, or have to adjust the fuel mixture (since you can't do that in flight on the TAM models)
      3. Navigate 1900 miles by itself, negotiating mid-Atlantic weather, variable wind speed, variable wind direction, variable air density, temperature, etc, with NO help from a pilot.
      4. Somehow provide power for all of the electronics for 40 hours
      5. Somehow fit 5.5 pounds of fuel, plus standard R/C radio, plus a home-grown GPS auto-navigation system, plus an alternator for the electrical equipment, plus two telemetry data systems, plus the computer to run it all into a plane that only weighs 11 pounds (think: two bag of groceries) and not weaken the structure so much that the whole mess DOESN'T fly apart on you.

      Now do that while legally blind and def.

      All I can say is: Wow.
      (okay, I had a whole bunch of four-letter words to say, but they aren't appropriate in this situation...)
    • Not trying to minimize the extaordinary effort, but the distance was around 900 miles, not 3000. Still and unbelievable effort -- remember reading about this on /. sometime (very) earlier this year.

  • Landing most impressive (Score:3, Interesting)

    by mnmn ( 145599 ) on Monday August 11, 2003 @09:55AM (#6665533) Homepage
    I believe the landing part was the most impressive of feats whether it was automated by GPS or some smart sensors on the plane and runway brought it down smoothly. I'd like to know more on that.

    The second most impressive part is maintaining a constant flight. The general altitude direction are set by a GPS sensor but constantly monitoring the devices, compensating for the temperature and winds, and sending the data back through satellite would be pretty complex. I'd like to know more about the on-board computers and the satellite uplink (and how much that cost).

    • Re:Landing most impressive (Score:5, Informative)

      by General_Corto ( 152906 ) on Monday August 11, 2003 @10:20AM (#6665836)
      According to a National Geographic article [nationalgeographic.com] from last year's attempts, the landing is handled by a local pilot:

      Pilot Paul Howey and others will be in Ireland waiting for the plane to appear on the horizon. They will head out to the bog and, if the plane comes in, take over manual control and land it.

      That seems a lot easier than trying to have the plane land itself, or landing it remotely (and by remotely I mean from the wrong side of the Atlantic).
      • According to that article (National Geographic) the engine is a four-stroke with 10cc's of displaced volume. Wow, I didn't realize they made 4 stroke engines that small.

      • Yeah thats not all that impressive. It must still be exciting to be standing in Ireland and see the plane arriving from Canada. High GPS tolerance devices could be used as the planes can be controlled from over 5 miles. Now I wanna build one.

  • national security? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by samhalliday ( 653858 ) on Monday August 11, 2003 @10:02AM (#6665618) Homepage Journal
    hmm, whats to stop anyone making one of these things and kitting it out with an explosive or biological warhead? can radars pick these things out as being targets without seagulls etc. raising false alarms?
    • Not much, but since the whole thing weighs like 11lbs you just would not be able to put that much explosive on it. 4oz of the right type of explosive can do some real damage if applied in a clever way, but in truth I'm much more worried about somone with a van then a RC aircraft. As for a bio warhead again you have the limit in weight and volume as well as the fact that dispersing a bio agent is a *LOT* harder than most people seem to think. Lets be honest, if you are cleaver enough you can hide a wepon in

      • So what's stopping you from building a bigger one?

        I mean, judging from the pictures on their page, the thing is tiny compared to anything manned. And without a pilot, your feasible cargo rises drastically. What would a small plutonium suitcase nuke weigh?
    • hmm, whats to stop anyone making one of these things and kitting it out with an explosive or biological warhead? can radars pick these things out as being targets without seagulls etc. raising false alarms?

      What's to stop anyone from making weapons out of half a dozen other simple things, the fact is it doesn't take more then about a minute to think of a ton of ways to do some serious damage if you really wanted too. In the end trying to specifically thwart each possible type of attack is bound to fail,
    • only in america would this get modded up as insightful...

      WAIT!!!stop... sorry

      only in america would someone even think of this and post it, i think Michale Moore said it best in bowling for columbine "america a nation afraid, a nation made afraid, a nation of fear"
    • we should just hire a bunch of farmers to camp out on our borders with shotguns, with instructions to blow the hell out of any suspicious RC planes.

  • Only way to stop drug smuggling (Score:4, Funny)

    by panurge ( 573432 ) on Monday August 11, 2003 @10:07AM (#6665680)
    Satellite guided self navigating smart missiles equipped to detect those sneaky little model aircraft and zap them right out of the sky...but wait, the armaments industry will need to get involved:

    Model aircraft engine $50
    As above to JAN spec with testing $15000

    Model aircraft fuselage $50
    As above, built by Lockheed, say $25000

    Home made navigation system $1000
    As above, built by Martin Marietta... oh, just make the whole thing a round $100000.

    Yes, folks, the threat from model aircraft carrying drugs could kickstart the entire US tech economy, just like Star Wars was going to in the 80s.

    • I worked for a summer internship at NASA Langley in Hampton, VA, and had the pleasure of assisting their chief radio-control builder in constructing and flying a couple remote-controlled model planes they use for research. Contrary to the huge prices in the parent post, NASA got a lot of value for very little money. We basically used off-the-shelf RC equipment, hand-built the planes just like hobbyists do it, and flew them very much like hobbyists do it.

      The main differences from traditional RC hobbyists w

  • How about something marine? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by cvk ( 696855 ) on Monday August 11, 2003 @10:15AM (#6665769)
    This was a great project. I know we've all had daydreams of building autonomous flying machines, and I wonder how many of us have also daydreamed of a small autonomous submersible? I think that a tiny submarine would be just as exciting to see cross the Atlantic although a bit slower.

    The primary benefit of a vehicle that uses the water as its transport mechanism is that it can't crash! It could stay a few dozen meters below the surface for optimum travel speed and emerge from the water at intervals to update its position by GPS and wire that and other data such as temperature, atmospheric pressure, wind speed, and the like back to the crew on land.

    Once nice side effect of traveling in such a dense medium is that a great deal of instrumentation weight would be okay since it's easy to make things float in water. The same cannot be said of the air! That means it might be possible to use a device like a gyroscope to keep track of heading while under the surface. Try loading something like that onto an RC airplane and you'll need some big wings.
    • Already is.

      I'm sorry that i can';t find the link (how dare you state something without a link) but some people have already made something like that. It's even niftier than you imagine now.

      They build a submersible that uses the flow of water as it sinks to propel itself. The difference in water temperature is then used to generate energy. At the bottom, the proces is reversed, again gaining momentum and energy as it raises!

      At the surface it then sends out the research data aquired sofar, and sinks again.

    • Once nice side effect of traveling in such a dense medium is that a great deal of instrumentation weight would be okay since it's easy to make things float in water. The same cannot be said of the air! That means it might be possible to use a device like a gyroscope to keep track of heading while under the surface. Try loading something like that onto an RC airplane and you'll need some big wings.

      They DO make electronic hobby gyros. They are used in RC helicopters all the time.

      The problem with a sub is

    • How about the underwater glider: http://abcnews.go.com/sections/scitech/CuttingEdge /cuttingedge021011.html
    • I wonder how many of us have also daydreamed of a small autonomous submersible?

      Well, there's me, though I was only interested in submersion as a means of riding out nasty storms. Technically, it's almost trivial since, as you note, making something that floats isn't very difficult and you don't have the size and power constraints that you would in an airplane. The one thing I haven't figured out is how to send back large quantities of data -- like a jpeg every few minutes -- without getting into expensive

  • CORRECTION (Score:5, Informative)

    by jsimon12 ( 207119 ) on Monday August 11, 2003 @10:36AM (#6666013) Homepage
    This would be the fifth plane they have launched, read the website:

    #1. Crashed due to a steering servo issue
    #2. Fuel system problem
    #3. Bad weather
    #4. LOST
    • This is the second plane from this year's batch. TAM's 1, 2, and 3 were launched last year. TAM 4 crashed only a few weeks ago.
    • This would be the fifth plane they have launched, read the website:

      It's the second one launched this year. TAMs 1 through 3 were launched last August.

  • Suspicious (Score:3, Informative)

    by essreenim ( 647659 ) on Monday August 11, 2003 @11:39AM (#6666679)
    I'm from Ireland and I mapped the precise gps coordinates to a map which seems to suggest the model plane actually didn't quite reach dry land at time of post. Maybe it has now but latitude 53 degrees, 27.67; and longitude 10 degrees, 4.20 is in the Atlantic ocean just a mile or so off the coast og county Galway - so close you could see the emerald hills (if it's not too misty)
  • The US Air Force [bbc.co.uk] has had one for 2 years now. Completely robotic, tipping the distance scale at 13,840 KM (8,600 miles), and above all else, it's utilitarian. The USAF plane is a fully featured spy plane. Sorry TAM, but you just don't measure up to this bad boy.
  • "TAMs numbered one through four were not entirely successful. This one worked."

    "You see! You SEE?! Your stupid minds! STUPID! STUPID!"
    • "Our compliments to the TAM5 unit, and regards to Captain Dunsel"

      "The M5 must be destroyed."
      "Destroyed, Kirk?! No. We're invincible. Look what we've done. Your might starships..."
  • ... take-off and landing were human assisted. Now get coding and see if you can make it take-off and land on it's own.
  • CBC Radio's "As It Happens" has a Real Audio interview [www.cbc.ca] with one of the team members. It's about 15 minutes into the first part of the show.

    "On Saturday, an American team launched a model airplane from Cape Spear, Newfoundland. And today that plane landed successfully in Ireland. It marks the longest distance - 3020km - ever travelled by a model airplane - and over the Atlantic no less. Les Hamilton is part of the Maryland team behind the launch of the plane. We've reached him in St. John's, Newfoundland.

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