Rutan Voyager

The Voyager ( Registration N269VA ) is a system developed by Burt Rutan experimental aircraft which is designed for extreme range.

Construction

The first flight of this model took place on 22 June 1984. The twin-engined mid-wing monoplane in canard design was set up for two pilots took turns during the flight. At the beginning of the flight worked both engines. With decrease in the amount of fuel and thus the aircraft weight, the front engine was then shut off.

The aircraft consists mainly of carbon fiber with a reinforcing layer of Hexcel Honeycomb HexWeb, a honeycomb structure. By this construction, almost every part of the aircraft is constructed as a fuel tank. The chassis decreed for weight reasons, only a manual operation. For navigation, the aircraft was equipped with an Omega navigation device and a then-new GPS receiver, which could be used, however, because not yet been started satellites only about 4 hours a day. In addition, a weather radar was installed in the nose of the right arm.

Record flight

The brother of the designer, Dick Rutan and Jeana Yeager launched on 14 December 1986 at 08:01 local time in Edwards Air Force Base with this airplane to the first non-stop flight around the world without refueling and intermediate landing. They flew in nine days, three minutes and 44 seconds a distance of 42,120 kilometers, the FAI recognized only 40,212 km of track. After the end of the record flight remained still only 32 liters of fuel in the main tank.

Problems with the world tour

By error (too low, they nose gear to be strong pumptes main landing gear ) were down the wing tips at the start of world tour on the runway and damaged. The winglets were also damaged nor controlled in the first hours of flight record sheared by a Sideslip. Due to the large aspect ratio of the wing, this did not have any critical shortening of the range considerably, however, led to fuel loss. In addition, there were some incidents, such as defective gyro, foaming in the - then new - overheated synthetic oil. The currently running engine stopped due to an unrecognized empty tank when pumping the fuel available in the main tank. During the flight, then had to be replaced and a fuel pump.

The aircraft was built in Mojave, California within five years. It is now in the National Air and Space Museum in Washington, DC issued.

Specifications

See source.