[HN Gopher] The longest ever flight was 64 days in a Cessna 172 ...
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The longest ever flight was 64 days in a Cessna 172 (2021)
Author : wglb
Score : 192 points
Date : 2022-12-11 23:11 UTC (23 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (hackaday.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (hackaday.com)
| joemama3131 wrote:
| rodgerd wrote:
| Well it certainly beats the record the RNZAF have for keeping an
| Orion aloft for 21.5 hours - although that was with no resupply.
| akiselev wrote:
| This is by far the most interesting part of the story:
|
| _> Refuelling was handled by lowering a hook via a winch down to
| a fuel truck that would trail the plane on a straight stretch of
| road, usually twice a day. The winch would then pull up a fuel
| hose from the truck, which would be used to fill the belly tank
| in around three minutes. The same system was used to regularly
| pull up food, oil and other supplies like towels and water for
| shaving and bathing._
|
| Midair refueling is the realm of air forces and these guys did it
| with a hook on a winch.
| mandevil wrote:
| Two decades earlier, a previous record holder, the Curtis Robin
| Ole Miss, stayed in the air for 27 days using real aerial
| refueling: https://airandspace.si.edu/collection-
| objects/curtiss-robin-... Fred and Al Key, brothers who owned
| an airfield together, flew the record plane, two other men
| (James Keeton and William Ward) flew the refueling plane. In
| order to make the refueling safe, the Keys had designed a
| breakaway spill valve to prevent a disconnection from spilling
| fuel, the forerunner to the modern aerial refueling system.
|
| The trickiest thing to me about what the Keys did was oil
| changes, which they needed to do every three days. They rigged
| up a metal catwalk around their engine, so that Fred could walk
| out and change the oil from the outside while the plane was
| still flying (they had two oil systems, each of which could
| lubricate the entire plane, so every three days they turned off
| the oil system on one side, Fred climbed out, drained the oil
| out on the ground- it's the 1930's, no one needs environmental
| impact statements!) closed the valve and refilled the oil tank,
| then they turned on that side and turned off the other side and
| did it again a few hours later when that oil had cooled.
|
| Both Fred and Al joined the USAAF during World War Two and flew
| bomber missions over Germany. Al stayed in the Air Force after
| the war and ended up as a Colonel.
| rlpb wrote:
| The point of Air Force midair refueling is for when there _isn
| 't_ a convenient long, straight road that they can get a tanker
| to. Otherwise they would just land :-)
|
| (also jet engines are really inefficient at low altitudes and
| it takes a lot of fuel to climb, so the other point is so that
| fighters don't expend the fuel getting back to altitude again)
| acedan wrote:
| angelmm wrote:
| For me, it's crazy they were able to stay that long time with the
| engine noise. Also, there's no that much space to stretch and
| doing some exercise. As the article says, most likely there
| aren't more people who want to try to beat it.
| matkoniecz wrote:
| > When asked by a reporter if he would ever replicate the
| stunt, Cook replied: "Next time I feel in the mood to fly
| endurance, I'm going to lock myself in a garbage can with the
| vacuum cleaner running, and have Bob serve me T-bone steaks
| chopped up in a thermos bottle. That is, until my psychiatrist
| opens for business in the morning."
|
| https://www.aopa.org/news-and-media/all-news/2008/march/pilo...
| bombcar wrote:
| It really likely is one of those "never will be beaten" records
| because anyone sane would do it in a B-52 bomber and have some
| room to stretch out - but everyone would immediately know it
| wasn't quite as "real" as being stuck in a plane the size of a
| Volkswagen bug for 2 months.
| mandevil wrote:
| Oil changes for a Stratofortress in flight would be a real
| trick. You could do what the Keys Brothers did and build a
| catwalk for wingwalking out to the engines- not recommended!-
| or you could do more like what the Hacienda did and run oil
| lines from each engine into the crew compartment so you can
| change it from inside, but that's a LOT of extra oil to pump.
| Going from the #1 engine all the way to the fuselage would be
| a long way to pump.
| ufmace wrote:
| B52 seems a little overpriced. I'd think you'd want something
| like a C-47/DC-3 - enough room to walk around in, shower,
| cook, etc, but hopefully not too crazy expensive to operate.
| throwaway0x7E6 wrote:
| I dread to think how much would it cost to fly that thing for
| 24*64 hours
| bombcar wrote:
| > One might think the B-52H Stratofortress, sixty years old
| and counting, would be the most expensive bomber to fly,
| but the GAO states it only costs $88,354 an hour.
|
| So we're looking at only a cool $135 million.
| michaelt wrote:
| According to [1] Federation Aeronautique Internationale
| stopped recognizing piloted endurance records altogether in
| 2015 due to safety concerns.
|
| So I'd say this record is very unlikely to be beaten!
|
| [1] https://www.damninteresting.com/the-unceasing-cessna-
| haciend...
| OliverJones wrote:
| And I thought a four-hour flight I once took in a 172 was far too
| long!
|
| Good little airplanes, they are.
|
| I suppose they chose their engine airspeed to achieve the lowest
| fuel consumption rate https://www.se.edu/aviation/wp-
| content/uploads/sites/4/2020/... See pdf page 132, book page
| 5-18. It looks like they could use as little as ~6 gallons/hour
| at 1900 rpm. You can save a lot of fuel by flying more slowly;
| handy to know if you need (heaven forbid) to stretch that
| 45-minute reserve when your destination is socked in.
| papercrane wrote:
| Funny seeing this here. I've been going through the past episodes
| of a podcast, Futility Closet, and they covered this:
|
| https://www.futilitycloset.com/2018/03/05/podcast-episode-19...
| blueside wrote:
| Pilots are truly some of the craziest people around. Just last
| summer, a guy flew a Cessna 172 from California to Hawaii.
|
| https://flightaware.com/live/flight/N490NW/history/20220820/...
| freeqaz wrote:
| How the $*^% is that possible...
|
| Are there any more details available about this, or is there
| just that FlightAware log? How does one ensure they have enough
| fuel to do this?!
| jjulius wrote:
| https://www.planeandpilotmag.com/news/the-
| latest/2022/08/30/...
| nsxwolf wrote:
| You remove the back seats and replace them with auxiliary
| fuel tanks. Typically this is done by couriers delivering
| aircraft for sale - the seats are then shipped separately as
| freight.
| walrus01 wrote:
| People fly small single engined planes from Nunavut to
| Greenland to Europe on a fairly regular basis.
| jacquesm wrote:
| A friend of mine did this for a living in his early 30's, he
| said those flights are probably the most dangerous things
| he's done in his life. He'd fly commercial to Canada, scout
| around for a good plane, arrange the sale and the various
| bits and pieces of paperwork, strip it down as much as
| possible, install extra fuel tanks and some other gear, then
| go to Halifax, check the plane over once more and then start
| puddle jumping hop by hop until reaching continental Europe.
| You could not pay me enough to try a stunt like that, let
| alone several times.
| walrus01 wrote:
| If he was flying Halifax-Newfoundland-Greenland-Europe the
| planes must not have been too small, because the
| Newfoundland to the next hop distance is quite large. The
| absolute shortest single leg distances involve going
| through Iqaluit and then Greenland.
| jacquesm wrote:
| Interesting, I don't know what planes he was ferrying,
| and we lost contact years ago (I moved to Canada myself,
| he moved somewhere else in NL) so I can't ask. Possibly
| he did what you suggested, it would make good sense.
| Quite possibly Halifax was mentioned as the last stop
| before the end of civilization in terms of repairs and
| spare part availability, but I'm very sure he came
| through there.
|
| It is an interesting thing though, the same planes that
| go fairly cheap in Canada are worth a fortune here in
| Europe so there definitely is money to be made.
| [deleted]
| graupel wrote:
| I spent what felt like 64 days in a Cessna 172 one afternoon. Or
| maybe it was a 152 :)
| jacobsenscott wrote:
| An hour felt like 2 minutes to me when my grandpa would fly me
| around :)
| eddsh1994 wrote:
| An afternoon will feel like 64 days in a 152! If it has seats
| behind you it was probably a skyhawk. If you could do tricks it
| was probably a 152.
| travisjungroth wrote:
| Are you thinking of a 152 Aerobat? 150 Aerobats are pretty
| rare, 152 Aerobats even more so.
| leeoniya wrote:
| Common Swift: "Hold my beer..."
|
| https://www.audubon.org/news/the-common-swift-new-record-hol...
| foreigner wrote:
| While carrying an extra load weighting almost 1/3 it's
| bodyweight!
| gxs wrote:
| Reminds me of the cannon ball run, is there a flight equivalent?
| JCM9 wrote:
| The aircraft is hanging from the ceiling at the Las Vegas airport
| along with displays of artifacts from the flight. One of those
| things people just walk past and don't pay attention to, but
| worth a look if you're there!
| Andrew_nenakhov wrote:
| It would help putting a big sign pointing at the plane and
| explaining what it did once.
| shagie wrote:
| From the ending of https://www.aopa.org/news-and-media/all-
| news/2008/march/pilo...
|
| > Before he passed away in 1978, Timm reminisced about his
| flying days and told his sons that he longed to locate 72B. His
| father's wish eventually prompted Timm's second son, Steve, to
| launch a focused effort to find and return N9172B to Las Vegas.
| He found it on a farm in Carrot River, Saskatchewan, Canada. He
| brought it back to Las Vegas in 1988. In 1992 the McCarran
| Aviation Heritage Museum (now the Howard W. Cannon Aviation
| Museum) obtained 72B for a permanent exhibit. It's been
| restored to its pre-flight condition.
|
| > Today, N9172B is back in Las Vegas. The 1958 Cessna 172 that
| holds the world endurance flight record hangs from the ceiling
| of the baggage claim area at McCarran International Airport.
| Next time you fly in to Las Vegas, take a minute to look up at
| one of the most prosaic record-setting airplanes in the world.
| And imagine what it must have been like to spend more than two
| months living in a Cessna 172.
| robga wrote:
| Just this year, an uncrewed Airbus Zephyr 8 High Altitude Pseudo-
| Satellite crashed just 4 hours shy of the time aloft for this
| crewed record.
|
| It's 82 feet long but only 166 pounds, and solar refuels it's
| batteries. Hardly the same class, but interesting nonetheless.
|
| https://www.overtdefense.com/2022/08/20/airbus-zephyr-crashe...
| mmastrac wrote:
| It didn't crash, it just "experienced circumstances that ended
| its current flight", hah.
|
| I realize we'll never hear about it, but I'd be very interested
| to see what caused it.
| robga wrote:
| Here is the result of a previous run. Probably this one came
| to the same fate? Turbulence or atmospheric conditions
| leading to mid air disintegration. When ZULU82 was lost, it
| was operating at a lower than usual altitude.
|
| https://www.atsb.gov.au/publications/investigation_reports/2.
| ..
| mmastrac wrote:
| That was wild:
|
| "While climbing through 8,000 ft above mean sea level, the
| UAV experienced a series of uncommanded turns. The UAV
| self-recovered from the first two uncommanded turns
| however, the third upset resulted in the aircraft entering
| an uncontrolled spiral descent. Despite attempts to return
| to controlled flight, the UAV sustained an in-flight break-
| up."
|
| I can only imagine the control systems that go into these
| gliders.
| flavius29663 wrote:
| > I can only imagine the control systems that go into
| these gliders.
|
| Fun fact, most planes are inherently stable, just like
| paper planes. If there is a disturbance, they will self
| correct most of the time. For example, glider pilots, if
| they do something stupid, are instructed to just let go
| of the controls, and the glider recovers on its own very
| quickly. Few ways this can go wrong: the wings start to
| "flap" by vibrating to a resonant frequency, in which
| case they need to change something, and also spiraling
| down towards the earth: not because the plane would not
| recover eventually, but because it might experience high
| forces that destroy them before recovery can happen.
|
| Few planes are inherently un-stable: meaning they cannot
| keep flying without constant input, only examples I know
| of are fly-by-wire modern fighter jets (4th generation
| onward) and planes with weird shapes like the B2 bomber.
|
| I don't think there is too much control put into these
| gliders for second to second operations, they are
| probably just letting it fly forward, with the control
| being: point it in a very general direction and don't
| lose contact with it.
| kqr wrote:
| As you said, stable is not necessarily good. A fully
| developed spin is incredibly stable to the point where
| you might not recover from it even if you try, but it
| also reliably takes you into the ground with too much
| vertical speed.
| imiller wrote:
| What I was (jokingly) told when flying paragliders is, if
| you just put your hands in the air and scream, the
| problem will probably resolve itself.
| AlexAndScripts wrote:
| Fighter jets and the B2 are by no means _inherently_
| stable, in fact they 're inherently extremely unstable
| relative or to earlier designs. It's just that the fly by
| wire systems make them fly stable.
| flavius29663 wrote:
| yeah, it was a typo, I meant unstable
| Nekhrimah wrote:
| I think you have a typo at the start of your second
| paragraph. Fairly certain you're calling out the few
| planes that are inherently UNstable there :)
| flavius29663 wrote:
| thanks, that made my whole comment hard to understand
| billforsternz wrote:
| For what it's worth I found your whole comment easy to
| understand because it was well constructed and very
| logical, so much so that I didn't even notice the typo
| because your intent was so clear that I subconsciously
| auto-corrected it.
| prottog wrote:
| That's amazing. I get in-air refueling, but the fact that the two
| pilots managed to live in this tiny space, performing tasks that
| I'm sure very quickly became repetitive and monotonous, listening
| to the engine, peeing in a bottle, etc. for two months is truly
| outrageous.
| matkoniecz wrote:
| > When asked by a reporter if he would ever replicate the
| stunt, Cook replied: "Next time I feel in the mood to fly
| endurance, I'm going to lock myself in a garbage can with the
| vacuum cleaner running, and have Bob serve me T-bone steaks
| chopped up in a thermos bottle. That is, until my psychiatrist
| opens for business in the morning."
|
| https://www.aopa.org/news-and-media/all-news/2008/march/pilo...
| shagie wrote:
| The part that made me chuckle outlaid was about hygiene...
|
| > The danger of in-flight bathing
|
| > In his diary, John Cook wrote, "We got a quart of bath
| water, a large towel and soap every other day."
|
| > On January 12, 1959, after refueling chores, Timm removed
| his clothes and stepped out onto the platform for a
| refreshing sponge bath. He started by brushing his teeth.
| Just then Cook realized that the airplane wasn't going to
| clear an upcoming ridge if the platform wasn't pulled in.
| Cook yelled at Timm to pull in the platform and later told of
| seeing his partner struggling to complete that task--buck
| naked, and weighing 240 pounds, with a toothbrush sticking
| out of one side of his mouth and toothpaste streaming out of
| the other. They cleared the ridge but learned to delay
| hygienic activities until they were over flatter terrain.
| kqr wrote:
| Not only that, but they had already tried a few times before,
| at least one 17 days long!
|
| > After the first three flights, the plane had never stayed
| aloft longer than 17 days.
|
| Imagine going up there a third time, spending a day, then two,
| then a week, then two weeks, and then a few days later being
| forced to land... only to get up there again aiming for two
| months!
| Karsteski wrote:
| Insane, fun story to read :)
| kibwen wrote:
| I was expecting to read that this was only the longest manned
| flight, but it seems that the record for unmanned/unrefueled
| flight via a solar-powered plane is a bit less. That flight took
| place earlier this year and the drone vanished over the Arizona
| desert just hours before the record:
| https://simpleflying.com/airbus-zephyr-flight-ends/ . Clearly the
| government of Nevada contracted the aliens at Area 51 to ensure
| the integrity of their airport's tourist attraction.
| WalterBright wrote:
| I asked my dad what they did on a long (8+ hours) bombing mission
| in WW2 when nature calls (a subject never covered by
| documentaries). He said "we used empty ammo boxes". I asked what
| they then did with the ammo boxes. He said "extra bombs".
| reilly3000 wrote:
| That's a real crap shoot.
| DonaldFisk wrote:
| There's another article on this flight, published around the same
| time, at https://www.damninteresting.com/the-unceasing-cessna-
| haciend...
| wpietri wrote:
| Ooh, that's a very good telling of the tale.
| NovemberWhiskey wrote:
| FYI: that's 85% of the design life of the Continental O-300
| engine in that aircraft (1,800 hours time-before-overhaul).
| someweirdperson wrote:
| Magnetos are time limited to 500 hours.
| yubiox wrote:
| Inspection at 500. Not tbo.
| yunohn wrote:
| > 1,800 hours time-before-overhaul
|
| That's surprising! Do you mean the entire life of the engine,
| or just one run? If the former, doesn't that get expensive? I
| imagine that's not very sustainable.
| evandijk70 wrote:
| In a car running at 100 kph, that would be 180000 km (roughly
| 110 miles). Most cars would need at least some parts replaced
| by that time as well..
| netcraft wrote:
| I think you forgot the K on your 110K miles
| stefan_ wrote:
| Yet only 54000 km at the more typical average speed of 30
| km/h. Are aircraft engines typically under high load at
| cruising speeds? It would seem they are generally overbuilt
| to overcome the high demands of takeoff.
| kgermino wrote:
| I think they are under more of a load a cruising speed
| than you'd expect. At speed both the car and plane are
| primarily overcoming wind resistance, which is more about
| speed and elevation than anything. If I'm understanding
| right the plane would be going more than highway speed
| within a few thousand feet of the ground for most of it's
| (flying) life so it's probably putting more stress on the
| engine than a car on the highway would.
|
| More importantly: if your car engine dies you gradually
| slow down and pull over. If your plane engine dies calmly
| pulling over isn't an option. It's much easier to justify
| spending the money ensuring a plane's engine is reliable.
| sokoloff wrote:
| To put the power-over-overhaul-run into a more comparable
| perspective, I think it's helpful to compare the gallons
| of fuel consumed [as a proxy for the amount of
| energy/work output]. A small aircraft engine like in a
| 172 might be 10 gallons per hour, or 18K gallons of
| flight time over an engine run.
|
| 18K gallons will take a typical road car around 500K
| miles, so an airplane engine getting "only 1800 hours" of
| flight time likely _outperforms_ the typical auto engine.
| _s wrote:
| They're generally outputting up to around 75% of their
| rated horsepower at cruise.
|
| I'd say that's closer to going 110km/h or 65mph in 2nd or
| 3rd gear for most cars.
| NovemberWhiskey wrote:
| For example, a typical performance cruise power setting
| in a Cessna 172SP might be 70% rated power (180 BHP at
| sea level), which is way, way, way more than you'd ever
| use for a sustained period in your car.
|
| Highway cruising might take 20-40 HP depending on your
| vehicle, which is probably more like 10% of rated power.
| 70% of rated power in a typical American car is probably
| like 120 MPH.
| idlewords wrote:
| Also worth mentioning is that they didn't spend all their
| time on cruise, but had to dip down to refuel from a
| truck twice a day, putting more work on the engine.
| NovemberWhiskey wrote:
| Overhauling an aircraft engine is a very serious undertaking
| involving removing the engine from the plane, shipping it
| away for complete disassembly and replacement of many parts.
| bitwize wrote:
| Entire life of the engine. After 1800 hours total operation,
| the engine should be overhauled: taken apart, cleaned, each
| part examined and replaced if necessary. Note that per FAA
| regulations in the USA, only actual flight time counts toward
| this limit, not time spent taxiing on the ground.
|
| It'll take a normal private pilot a few years to reach 1800h
| of operation, so it's more economical if you're not flying
| the plane continuously for weeks at a time.
|
| But yeah, it's expensive. Owning a plane is expensive. It
| depends on if it's worth it to you to operate the plane.
| Small single-engine planes like the Cessna 172 are commonly
| used for recreation or training. So if you use it often, such
| frequent overhauls will pay for themselves in terms of safety
| and reliability.
|
| Maybe when all-electric recreational aircraft become common
| they won't have to be maintained quite so much...
| travisjungroth wrote:
| Most private pilots will _never_ get to 1800 hours. Even
| 100 hours per year is a lot.
| jeffrallen wrote:
| Electric airplanes are already used in training in Europe.
| They are less expensive to operate on an hourly basis just
| because of fuel/energy cost. But they are probably also
| cheaper to overhaul; the Emrax motors in Pipistrels are
| relatively simple, and it would probably cost less to buy
| two and swap one out (sending the other one back to Emrax
| for a new bearings) than to do one thermal engine overhaul.
| And almost no downtime!
|
| (I work on another electric airplane which will take flight
| in 2023.)
| yunohn wrote:
| Interesting, thanks for the context. TIL!
| NovemberWhiskey wrote:
| Piston engines like you get in a Cessna 172 are also
| about the worst-case for overhaul times, since there's so
| much mechanical complexity and because they're often run
| at/near maximum rated power for long periods.
|
| Turboprop engines (effectively these are jet engines with
| propellers attached) like the ubiquitous P&W PT6A have
| TBOs up to 4,500 or even 6,000 hours.
| vikingerik wrote:
| And that's largely why this mission came to an end at this
| particular duration - the engine had degraded too much from the
| continuous use, it was barely delivering enough power to stay
| airborne.
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(page generated 2022-12-12 23:00 UTC)