Maynard Hill, who has died aged 85 on the 7th June 2019, made his mark on aviaon history in 2003 when one of his remote controlled model aircra became the first to fly a record-breaking 1,882 miles across the Atlanc on less than a gallon of fuel.
Hill's TAM (Transatlantic Model) 5, with a wingspan of 6ft and weighing less than 11lbs, made it from Newfoundland to Ireland with a few drops of fuel to spare, marking a record time for the flight of 38 hours and 23 minutes. The flight recreated the historic first transatlantic journey of the British aviation pioneers Alcock and Brown, who made the crossing in 16 hours and 27 minutes in 1919. A retired engineer, Hill had reason to savour his moment of triumph: 24 test prototypes of his design had wobbled into the air and failed, crashed or disappeared. But he was certain he could build a model aircraft that could stay aloft for 1,875 miles, enough to fly across the Atlantic. In August 2002, TAM 1 climbed to 1,000ft bound for Ireland before falling into the ocean. Two days later TAM 2 stalled and met the same fate. TAM 3 disappeared in a rainstorm eight hours and 479 miles out. Having made adjustments to his computerised autopilot system, Hill returned to Newfoundland the following year, launching TAM 4 into a cloudless sky over Cape Spear at 8pm on August 8 2003. Contact was lost at 430 miles downrange. Someone joked that the Bermuda Triangle may have had a cousin over Greenland. Or perhaps the Icelandic Navy was in need of target practice. Undaunted, at 7.45pm local time the next day, Hill again held his breath as TAM 5 climbed rapidly, turning gracefully before disappearing
out of sight on a 62-degree heading towards Ireland. By 11pm, satellite data showed the tiny aircraft still aloft at a satisfactory altitude, making approximately 43mph with no tailwind. At 8.30 the following morning, the little plane, nicknamed The Spirit of Butts Farm, after the farm in Maryland owned by Beecher Butts where it had been tested, was roughly 560 miles out. But Hill noted some ominous data from satellites monitoring its telemetry. The aircraft's four-stroke engine was supposed to be regulated at 3,900rpm, but the readings ranged from 3,100 to 4,100rpm. The plane's altitude was bouncing between 280 and 320 metres, suggesting a porpoising flight path from a shallow climb to a speedy dip. "The Spirit trotted along all day Sunday," Hill reported. "Over the midocean it picked up a 5-10mph tailwind and was cruising at 5055mph. I went to bed at roughly 10pm, fearful that the cool of night would increase the viscosity of the fuel, taking the engine from lean to dead." When he awoke at 4am, there had been no satellite data for three hours, and Hill believed the plane was lost; it was agreed to stand down the officials in Ireland who were making a special six-hour trip from Dublin to the landing site at Dooloughton, Bay Beach, Co Galway.
But just then, data from one of the satellites confirmed that TAM 5 was not only still flying, but was now far enough east to be in warming sunshine, and had shed a lot of fuel weight. By 9am local time (12.30pm in Ireland), the Spirit was a mere 70 miles from the Irish coast. The landing was a cliff hanger. The engine had been set to run for roughly 37 hours, and Hill worried it might stop a couple of miles short of the landing site. At 2pm Irish time, the Spirit of Butts Farm hove into view at Dooloughton Beach, and one of the Irish officials took manual control, banging the rudder stick hard right to kill the engine. A mobile phone link was opened to Hill as the Spirit made a dead-stick landing approximately five feet from the designated spot. At 2.08pm, hearing over the phone link the shout "It's on the ground!", Hill led a whooping cheer, buried his head in his wife's shoulder "and wept unashamedly for joy". The plane's tank contained less than two ounces of fuel – a quarter of a cupful. "In the model airplane world, this is no different from Armstrong landing on the moon," Carl Layden, an official observer of the feat, announced. A blacksmith's son, Maynard Luther Hill was born on February 21 1926, in the coal mining town of Lehighton, Pennsylvania. He numbered Charles Lindbergh and Amelia Earhart among his childhood heroes but was Maynard Hill with TAM5 before its transatlanc Launch - Photo from Washington Post
PLEASE NOTE: The Text for this article was reproduced from the Daily Telegraph Monday 21st October 2019.
