Voyager ‘shoots curl’

Press, 18 December 1986, Page 11

Voyager ‘shoots curl’

NZPA-AP Mojave, California Voyager threaded its way through the spiralling arms of Typhoon Marge yesterday and headed toward the Philippines in a bid to become the first plane to circle the globe non-stop without refuelling. “We just shot the curl and dodged the bullet,” said the mission's chief meteorologist, ten Snellman, after directing the pilot, Dick Rutan, through the northern fringe of the storm. Mr Snellman placed Voyager between two of the typhoon’s spiral arms, picking up 100 km/ h tailwinds to aid it on its world-record quest.

At 48 hours into the flight from California, the lightweight plane with the accidentally clipped 33.3 m wingspan had gone almost 10,000 km on its planned 40,000 km flight. Mr Rutan, aged 48, went to sleep after the 12-hour ordeal of flying through turbulence from the storm, and his copilot, Jeana Yeager, aged 34, took over. The pair have shut down the front engine to improve fuel economy. The crew had planned to shut down the front engine before reaching the storm, but the plane’s designer, Burt Rutan, the pilot’s brother, said that was postponed because the airplane was still too heavy with its fuel load to fly with only the rear engine. A mission spokesman, Peter Riva, said Dick Rutan had turned the engine off for about nine minutes on Tuesday, but the plane lost altitude so the engine was fired up again. More styrofoam had flaked off Voyager’s damaged wingtips but did not harm the plane’s performance, said Mr Riva. The remaining 45cm of foam was properly covered with wing skin and was not expected to erode further.