2:16 PM
""We calculated enough fuel for 38 hours," (he said), adding that the plane had just 51.1 millilitres of fuel remaining when it landed — enough for about 40 more minutes of flight. "It was real close."

Chad passes along the link to a picture of The Spirit of Butts Farm, the first model aircraft to make a transatlantic flight--1,888 miles/ 3,036 km (on two ounces of stove fuel per hour!), from Newfoundland to Ireland. Even more incredible, the plane landed less than 100 feet from where it was expected to arrive. The team's reports during the flight are great reading ("We still think there's a 50-50 chance of making it and we look forward to clucking cheerfully on Monday morning.")

The designer of the amazing plane is Maynard Hill (on the left side of the picture to the left, holding his aircraft), a retired Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Lab engineer with a lot of retired NASA buddies (I suspect this hill on NASA's simulated Mars project* is named after him) and a long and storied history of breaking records for model aviation. Now in his 70s, he's nearly blind and deaf, and has to dye his glue red so he can see while working on his planes. But he's got bigger plans to come. When he was asked before a 2001 attempt, Hill speculated as to what his next project might be: a flight around the world.

Wow.

* As a sidebar, note that the NASA Haughton-Mars Project Page is fascinating reading as well.