Homemade Flying Hovercraft

Another remarkable aircraft!

Solar Plane

Solar plane lands after completing 26-hour flight
Record feat completes seven years of planning and brings project one step closer to goal of circling globe using only energy from
the sun
Eliane Engeler
Payerne, Switzerland — The Associated Press Published on Thursday, Jul. 08, 2010 5:22AM EDT Last updated on Thursday, Jul.
08, 2010 7:07PM EDT
An experimental solar-powered plane landed safely Thursday after completing a 26-hour test flight, proving
that the aircraft can collect enough energy from the sun during the day to stay aloft all night.
Pilot Andre Borschberg eased the Solar Impulse onto the runway at Payerne airfield about 50 kilometres
southwest of the Swiss capital Bern at exactly 9 a.m. local time Thursday.
Helpers rushed to stabilize the pioneering plane as it touched down, ensuring that its massive 63-metre
wingspan didn't scrape the ground and topple the craft.
The record feat completes seven years of planning and brings the Swiss-led project one step closer to its goal of
circling the globe using only energy from the sun.
“We achieved more than we wanted. Everybody is extremely happy,” Mr. Borschberg told reporters after
landing.
Previous flights included a brief “flea hop” and a longer airborne test earlier this year, but this week's attempt
was described as a “milestone” by the team.
The team says it has now demonstrated that the single-seat plane can theoretically stay in the air indefinitely,
recharging its depleted batteries using 12,000 solar cells and nothing but the rays of the sun during the day.
But while the team says this proves that emissions-free air travel is possible, it doesn't see solar technology
replacing conventional jet propulsion any time soon.
Instead, the project's overarching purpose is to test and promote new energy-efficient technologies.
Project co-founder Bertrand Piccard, himself a record-breaking balloonist, said many people had been skeptical
that renewable energy could ever be used to take a man into the air and keep him there.
“There is a before and after in terms of what people have to believe and understand about renewable energies,”
Mr. Piccard said, adding that the flight was proof new technologies can help break society's dependence on fossil
fuels.
The team will now set its sights on an Atlantic crossing, before attempting a round-the-world flight in 2013,




making only five stops along the way.
“It's absolutely not time to relax,” said Mr. Piccard.
Mr. Borschberg took off from Payerne airfield into the clear blue sky shortly before 7 a.m. Wednesday, allowing
the plane to soak up plenty of sunshine and fly in gentle loops over the Jura mountains west of the Swiss Alps.
The custom-built aircraft with its thin fuselage and the wingspan of a Boeing 777 passenger jet managed to
climb to 8,535 metres and reached top speeds of over 120 kilometres an hour.
Mr. Borschberg, a 57-year-old former Swiss fighter who was wearing a parachute – just in case – dodged low-
level turbulence and thermal winds, endured freezing conditions during the night and ended the test flight with
a picture-perfect landing to cheers and whoops from hundreds of supports on the ground.
“The night is quite long, so to see the first rays of dawn and the sun returning in the morning – that was a gift”
Mr. Borschberg said after touchdown.
Former NASA chief pilot Rogers E. Smith, one of the project's flight directors, praised Mr. Borschberg's feat of
endurance and the overall success of the mission.
“We ended up with perhaps 20 per cent more energy than we in the most optimistic way projected,” Mr. Smith
told The AP.
After completing final tests on the plane after landing, Mr. Borschberg embraced Mr. Piccard before gingerly
unstrapping himself from the bathtub size cockpit he had spent more than 26 hours sitting in.
“When you took off it was another era,” said Mr. Piccard, who achieved the first nonstop circumnavigation of
the globe in a balloon, the Breitling Orbiter III, in 1999. “You land in a new era where people understand that
with renewable energy you can do impossible things.”

B-36 Bomber

"Six turning & four burning". The 10 engine B-36 Peacemaker was massive. I recall reading that it was the only US bomber that never dropped a bomb in anger. I saw one of these once at SAC in Omaha. From the Jimmy Stewart movie "Strategic Air Command".

For the lads at DeHavilland Aircraft

A number of my compadres at the Air Reserve in Downsview thirty years ago went on to careers at DeHavilland Aircraft, at the hangars next door. Here's an article from the old RCAF magazine, The Roundel, on one of the companies that made our aircraft.

Click on a page to read it.

A Message From Transport Canada for air travellers

Rick Mercer's Message From Transport Canada.

There Never Was An Arrow part 1

This documentary was aired in 1979, 20 years after the cancellation of the Avro Arrow jet intercepter. I was doing a college paper on the plane around this time & moreso than all the articles, books, etc at the time - this film had the most profound effect on me as to what might have been if Arrow 206 had flown & the jet went into squadron service with the Canadian Air Force. Cancellation of the project killed the company, which had created 692 of the CF-100 subsonic jet fighters, the first commercial jetliner in North America & the Avrocar "flying saucer". They had ambitious plans for a Toronto monorail system among other ideas. When the doors closed, many engineers went to the US & some helped NASA with the Mercury, Gemini, & Appolo programs. Thirty years later, the interviews here with people who are now gone is priceless.

There Never Was An Arrow part 2

This documentary was aired in 1979, 20 years after the cancellation of the Avro Arrow jet intercepter. I was doing a college paper on the plane around this time & moreso than all the articles, books, etc at the time - this film had the most profound effect on me as to what might have been if Arrow 206 had flown & the jet went into squadron service with the Canadian Air Force. Cancellation of the project killed the company, which had created 692 of the CF-100 subsonic jet fighters, the first commercial jetliner in North America & the Avrocar "flying saucer". They had ambitious plans for a Toronto monorail system among other ideas. When the doors closed, many engineers went to the US & some helped NASA with the Mercury, Gemini, & Appolo programs. Thirty years later, the interviews here with people who are now gone is priceless.

There Never Was An Arrow part 3

This documentary was aired in 1979, 20 years after the cancellation of the Avro Arrow jet intercepter. I was doing a college paper on the plane around this time & moreso than all the articles, books, etc at the time - this film had the most profound effect on me as to what might have been if Arrow 206 had flown & the jet went into squadron service with the Canadian Air Force. Cancellation of the project killed the company, which had created 692 of the CF-100 subsonic jet fighters, the first commercial jetliner in North America & the Avrocar "flying saucer". They had ambitious plans for a Toronto monorail system among other ideas. When the doors closed, many engineers went to the US & some helped NASA with the Mercury, Gemini, & Appolo programs. Thirty years later, the interviews here with people who are now gone is priceless.

There Never Was An Arrow part 4

This documentary was aired in 1979, 20 years after the cancellation of the Avro Arrow jet intercepter. I was doing a college paper on the plane around this time & moreso than all the articles, books, etc at the time - this film had the most profound effect on me as to what might have been if Arrow 206 had flown & the jet went into squadron service with the Canadian Air Force. Cancellation of the project killed the company, which had created 692 of the CF-100 subsonic jet fighters, the first commercial jetliner in North America & the Avrocar "flying saucer". They had ambitious plans for a Toronto monorail system among other ideas. When the doors closed, many engineers went to the US & some helped NASA with the Mercury, Gemini, & Appolo programs. Thirty years later, the interviews here with people who are now gone is priceless.

There Never Was An Arrow part 5

This documentary was aired in 1979, 20 years after the cancellation of the Avro Arrow jet intercepter. I was doing a college paper on the plane around this time & moreso than all the articles, books, etc at the time - this film had the most profound effect on me as to what might have been if Arrow 206 had flown & the jet went into squadron service with the Canadian Air Force. Cancellation of the project killed the company, which had created 692 of the CF-100 subsonic jet fighters, the first commercial jetliner in North America & the Avrocar "flying saucer". They had ambitious plans for a Toronto monorail system among other ideas. When the doors closed, many engineers went to the US & some helped NASA with the Mercury, Gemini, & Appolo programs. Thirty years later, the interviews here with people who are now gone is priceless.

There Never Was An Arrow part 6

This documentary was aired in 1979, 20 years after the cancellation of the Avro Arrow jet intercepter. I was doing a college paper on the plane around this time & moreso than all the articles, books, etc at the time - this film had the most profound effect on me as to what might have been if Arrow 206 had flown & the jet went into squadron service with the Canadian Air Force. Cancellation of the project killed the company, which had created 692 of the CF-100 subsonic jet fighters, the first commercial jetliner in North America & the Avrocar "flying saucer". They had ambitious plans for a Toronto monorail system among other ideas. When the doors closed, many engineers went to the US & some helped NASA with the Mercury, Gemini, & Appolo programs. Thirty years later, the interviews here with people who are now gone is priceless.

The Avro CF-100 Canuck film Part 1

Part 1 of this 1956 film created by the Avro Canada film department. A very good overview of the CF-100 from design through production, armament testing, and into squadron service. I have this film on videotape but someone else has had this posted at YouTube for some time.

The Avro CF-100 Canuck film Part 2

Part 2 of this 1956 Avro Canada factory film on the CF-100 "Lead Sled".

The Avro CF-100 Canuck film Part 3

Part 3 of this 1956 Avro Canada factory film on the CF-100.
Good sequence here of the planes in squadron service & a simulated scramble and interception.

Part 3, Avro Jetliner & Arrow "Too Good to be True"

This documentary program aired on TV Ontario under the title of Too Good to be True. It's the story of Avro Canada's Jetliner, the Avro Arrow supersonic fighter, and the designer Jim Floyd. The narrator of the introduction is Elwy Yost, a fixture for many years as host of TVO's Saturday Night at the Movies, and besides being a movie buff, he also worked at Avro for several years in Human Resources. He was one of the last employees after "Black Friday" in 1959 when the Arrow project was cancelled, and the company went under.

The Avro Canada Avrocar

This segment was part of a program that aired many years ago on TV Ontario that dealt with experimental & circular aircraft, including this portion on Canada's "flying saucer" - the Avro Avrocar. The Canadian government, the US Airforce & US Army all kicked in funds for the development of this secret project, which although a failure as a fighter jet, was the first hovercraft. The Toronto Aerospace Museum has been trying for some time to acquire one of the prototypes for display back where it was made in Toronto.

ALS patient gets a ride on a fighter jet

Part of the earlier program in which a young family man with ALS gets another aviation wish fulfilled - here he goes for a flight aboard a high performance jet fighter.

Radio Control SR71 Blackbird Jet

Today's content comes courtesy of Carmine Nacaratto. A very large toy - that I'd probably prang!