Eight years ago today, an RC plane became the first to fly across the Atlantic

I am highly skeptical.<p>1) 1 litre of fuel doesn't get you that far.<p>2) Was the entire course programmed into the plane? This is non-trivial given that high winds would likely push a small little plane off course.<p>3) Article claims that GPS telemetry was sent continuously. What did they use? Wifi doesn't work. There are no cell towers in the ocean. The only option that could remotely work is satellite data. That costs a fortune and has heavy equipment.<p>#3 is the big one.<p>EDIT: I am still skeptical but less so after reading the child comments. It seems HAM radio was used to relay telemetry. Communicating with a tiny moving object via HAM still seems a bit unbelievable. But I don't know enough on this subject. Also, the craft was supposedly using auto pilot over the Atlantic. I don't see how it is an RC craft ... perhaps a UAV would be a more appropriate term. Anyways, upvoting child posts for a stimulating early morning thought exercise :)

Who cares if it was actively RC or not?!? It's still quite an achievement that the plane could fly autonomously across the Atlantic.<p>Imagine that: in less than 100 years since the Wright Brothers took off, we have a hobbyist autonomous plane that flies across the Atlantic. That's a huge achievement nevertheless.

This was an autopilot flight, not an RC flight.<p>This was not the first unmanned autopilot flight across the Atlantic; that was Laima, five years earlier: <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insitu_Aerosonde" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insitu_Aerosonde</a><p>Laima took 26 hours and 5.7 liters of fuel. Her three sisters didn't make it across the ocean.

I remember reading about this a while back. Sadly, said plane was not considered for a world record because the RC community felt that even though it only used auto pilot for the in-air part, only RC planes that were remote controlled for the entire voyage should be considered for records.

I read this an hour or so ago, it's from <a href="http://dlewis.net/nik" rel="nofollow">http://dlewis.net/nik</a> which is a surprisingly good email newsletter

These kinds of planes would be handy for moving small amounts of contraband...

Here's a video of the plane's arrival in Ireland and its landing.<p><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6KEIq76JE7o" rel="nofollow">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6KEIq76JE7o</a>

If it was remote controlled, how did it survive the 3 hours without contact?