Two US adventurers began their attempt to re-enact the first nonstop flight across the Atlantic, flying from Newfoundland, Canada to Ireland.
After three weeks of weather delays and technical glitches, millionaire adventurer Steve Fossett and co-pilot Mark Rebholz left St. John's for Clifden, Ireland, on Saturday under cloudy skies and in high wind at 7:20pm Newfoundland time Saturday, said Dean Williams, a spokesman for the pilots.
Eighty-six years ago, British pilot John Alcock and US pilot Arthur Whitten-Brown took off from a makeshift runway in Newfoundland in a bid to make the first nonstop flight across the Atlantic. They ended up nose-down in an Irish bog, but nonetheless made history in 1919. The journey took 16 hours and 22 minutes.
delayed take-off
Fossett and Rebholz are trying to re-enact the 3,040km flight in a replica of the Vickers Vimy biplane. They hoped to take off June 14 -- the anniversary of the original flight -- but were grounded in St. John's for more than a week waiting for good flying weather. A planned departure for June 25 was also canceled because of equipment malfunction.
Although the predicted showers held off Saturday evening, the strong winds made for a rough launch.
"You could see that the wings were moving in the wind from takeoff," Williams said.
Since much of the up to 22-hour flight will be at night, they needed good weather over the Atlantic Ocean and in Ireland. Such ideal conditions along the entire route only occur about once a week.
Fossett, 60, and Rebholz, 52, spent the hours before the launch looking over the plane and testing its engine, Williams said.
After a farewell news conference just before takeoff, the pilots donned survival suits designed to keep them warm and settled in the plane.
"They were very concentrated, very excited obviously and quite happy to finally be taking off," Williams said.
record-holder
In March, Fossett became the first person to fly around the world solo without stopping or refueling. He also holds the record for the first solo balloon flight around the world.
The aircraft they will pilot is as close a replica as possible to the Vickers Vimy flown by Alcock and Whitten-Brown, but it has a taller wheel, modern engines and brakes and radios. But Rebholz is relying on the same, now-archaic, equipment that Brown used for navigation -- a sextant and magnetic compass.
With its 21m double wing span, insect-like body and the loud buzz of its engines that propel the plane at about 120km per hour, the biplane looks more like a giant dragonfly than an aircraft. The pilots' heads stick out of the open cockpit.
1913 challenge
The flight they will try to re-create was born out of a challenge issued in 1913 by the owner of the London Daily Mail. The offer was ?10,000 to the first pilots who fly from North America to the UK in under 72 hours.
For six years the challenge went unanswered.
Then in 1919 four teams, including Alcock and Brown, attempted to make their way to Newfoundland, the closest point in North America to the United Kingdom.
In the weeks before Alcock and Brown took to the air from Lester's Field, just outside St. John's, two of the teams crashed while the other didn't make it off the ground.
Fossett and Rebholz hope to land on the eighth hole on Clifden's Connemara Golf Links.
PHISHING: The con might appear convincing, as the scam e-mails can coincide with genuine messages from Apple saying you have run out of storage For a while you have been getting messages from Apple saying “your iCloud storage is full.” They say you have exceeded your storage plan, so documents are no longer being backed up, and photos you take are not being uploaded. You have been resisting Apple’s efforts to get you to pay a minimum of ￡0.99 (US$1.33) a month for more storage, but it seems that you cannot keep putting off the inevitable: You have received an e-mail which says your iCloud account has been blocked, and your photos and videos would be deleted very soon. To keep them you need
The Israeli military has demolished entire villages as part of its invasion of south Lebanon, rigging homes with explosives and razing them to the ground in massive remote detonations. The Guardian reviewed three videos posted by the Israeli military and on social media, which showed Israel carrying out mass detonations in the villages of Taybeh, Naqoura and Deir Seryan along the Israel-Lebanon border. Lebanese media has reported more mass detonations in other border villages, but satellite imagery was not readily available to verify these claims. The demolitions came after Israeli Minister of Defense Israel Katz called for the destruction of
A US YouTuber who caused outrage for filming himself kissing a statue commemorating Korean wartime sex slaves has been sentenced to six months in prison, a court in Seoul said yesterday. Johnny Somali, 25, gained notoriety several years ago for recording himself doing a series of provocative stunts in South Korea and Japan, and streaming them on platforms such as YouTube and Twitch. South Korean authorities indicted Somali — whose real name is Ramsey Khalid Ismael — in 2024 on public order violations and obstruction of business, and banned him from leaving the country. “The court has sentenced him to six months in
The death toll from a shooting in western Afghanistan rose to 11 on Saturday, after gunmen targeted civilians at a picnic spot in Herat, the provincial authority said. Bullet marks were visible on a wall of the Sayed Mohammad Agha Shia shrine, while bloodstains marked a blanket abandoned at the scene. “Eleven people have been recorded dead and eight others wounded from Friday’s incident, with the condition of two of the wounded reported as critical,” Herat’s information office said in a statement. The update raises a toll of seven killed provided on Friday by the Afghan Ministry of Interior Affairs
RSS