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1986 Circumnavigation with The Voyager
By Joshua Adams
In 1981, a group of all but average people came to the idea of an aircraft, which would travel the circumference of the earth in a single flight manned by only two. Surprisingly, this extreme idea was envisioned on the surface of a napkin during a lunch. The two individuals who were behind this was Dick Rutan, and Jeana Yeager who were known to be two strong personalities, never perceptible of laziness of any kind. Dick was a past veteran of Vietnam who had been shot down in air combat and recovered by the U.S. Army after aircraft ejection. Jeana was a pilot and horse rider who had set many speed records in the Rutan EZ plane during the 1980s. Her personality was more laid back and less talkative, but was balanced by her unwillingness to give up at all costs and her fearless image that many of the male Voyager team members had placed on her. The project, which was soon called the Voyager project after the name of the to-be record setting aircraft, launched its primary research and design in 1881. The team consisted of devoted and eager volunteers. Burt, who was one of these team members, posed as the project engineer. He searched for materials to design the aircraft that would be pliable, strong, and most of all light. He did just that, but the downside was pretty obvious to the crew. If you were to simply nudge the surface of the craft a little too hard (say, with a swinging elbow), it would damage the chassis making it faulty. The real test of the design materials came three years later during the Voyager’s first flight. The Voyager was a mere 939 pounds without fuel, but upon completing fueling and preparation for take off, the aircraft weighed in at about 9,700 pounds. Its wings spread 110 feet, which sagged towards the ground a bit from the heavy fuel they contained. The crew at this point had spent more than 18 months building the Voyager, so this flight was a lot to loose if things went wrong. To everyone’s relief, the plane successfully landed back on the runway after a long test flight. The time had quickly come to finally make the true flight around the world. The two pilots still remained to be Dick Rutan and Jeana Yeager. It was 8:01 a.m. on December 14, 1986 that the Voyager began down the long 15,000-foot airstrip at Edwards Air Force Base in California. As the aircraft gained speed, everything seemed to be perfect; until one of the team members notice the right wing’s tip. The weight of the fuel contained inside of the wings, combined with the strong air draft produced by the speed of the Voyager managed to push the tip to the asphalt of the runway. Sparks flew from the wing, and Dick and Jeana were informed about the problem. But, they had their minds made up already. They were going to continue no matter what happened. The Voyager lifted off the runway, and the crew’s wrenching, grinding teeth finally relaxed. The damage revealed from the wing was fortunately minimal. A single winglet was about the entire problem. It would cause too great an air resistance to be able to continue the full flight, so accompanying bi-planes attempted to knock it off. During the process, the winglet did the job for the crew as the heavy wind speeds tore it off. The wing itself was in suitable condition to carry the loads of fuel, so the flight continued. Many unfortunate events occurred beyond just their take-off. The two pilots went through storms, oxygen deprivation (from high altitudes), auto-pilot malfunction, electronic noise canceller malfunction, hallucination, and the overall feeling that comes with living inside of a cockpit the size of a phone booth for nine days. They, nonetheless, never gave up their dream for setting this record of furthest distance traveled in a single flight. After 9 hours and 3 minutes of non-stop flight, the Voyager landed at Edwards Air Force Base at 8:06 a.m. on December 23, 1986. The Voyager team demonstrated to the entire world that anything can be accomplished if you put enough laboring work, determination, and dream into it.
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The Voyager
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This intel was contributed by Spectro
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