ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, December 15, 1996 TAG: 9612160083
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-13 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: LOS ANGELES
SOURCE: Associated Press
For nine days a decade ago, a bizarre-looking aircraft named Voyager droned slowly around the world, circumnavigating the globe nonstop on a single tank of gas.
When pilots Dick Rutan and Jeana Yeager climbed out of the cramped experimental plane shortly before Christmas 1986, they had been bounced by storms, assaulted by incessant noise and sickened by oxygen deprivation at high altitude on the 25,000-mile journey.
They also had completed aviation's last great milestone, the first nonstop, unrefueled round-the-world flight, with very little left in the tank.
Voyager took off Dec. 14, 1986, with 1,200 gallons of fuel. It landed Dec. 23 with just 18 gallons to spare.
Flying westward, ever westward, Voyager crossed the Pacific and Indian oceans, soared over Africa and the Atlantic, skirted South America, slipped across Central America and flew north along the coast of Mexico back to California.
The anniversary of that flight was celebrated Friday at the National Air & Space Museum in Washington, D.C., where Voyager is now on permanent display.
It was a feat accomplished on a shoestring, a project created by a handful of people working in a remote desert hangar in Mojave, Calif.
Conceived by designer Burt Rutan in 1979-80 and proposed to his brother, Dick, in 1981, Voyager was developed over five years with a financial backing ranging from corporate sponsors to individual donors.
Designed for ultimate fuel mileage, the gawky, lightweight aircraft with a 110-foot wingspan demanded special piloting skills to fly.
``To best describe it, it was kind of like walking across a lake on rocks, or lily pads with alligators all under you,'' Dick Rutan said from Washington, recalling via telephone the challenge of controlling Voyager.
``This was something that was real difficult to fly, like it was right on the ragged edge all the time,'' said Rutan, an ex-Air Force combat pilot who was 48 when he and Yeager, then 34, flew into the record books.
Voyager's creator now admits the Rutans had serious doubts about Voyager's capabilities, doubts he kept secret at the time.
``It did get airborne, just barely. It did climb, but just barely,'' Dick Rutan recalled.
Crossing Africa was the stretch where Dick Rutan believed Voyager was most in jeopardy. The plane rose into the thinning air of 20,000 feet in the face of towering storms and menacing mountain peaks.
``We were fighting to stay sane at high altitude and dodging some really horrific weather. I thought that put us in peril pretty quick,'' he said.
Near disaster came in a thunderstorm over the Atlantic.
``We were just pitched around totally out of control, just like a leaf in a big storm, and then finally it literally spit us out back into clear smooth air again, but we were almost upside down,'' Rutan said.
A decade after their feat, the Rutan brothers said it will still be considered incredible decades hence.
``Records are there, but somebody always breaks 'em. But if you do a milestone then you get to keep that forever,'' said Dick Rutan.
``Certainly someone someday will fly further or fly faster around the world,'' Burt Rutan said. ``But no one will ever fly around the world nonrefueled first.''
LENGTH: Medium: 65 linesby CNB