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Solar Impulse plane doing epic global flight

Landing at Chongqing any moment now
Video at http://solarimpulse.com

They had expected this to be a quick pit stop with onward travel in a few hours but because of weather issues they will remain here perhaps for a week.
 
After 20 days at Chongqing waiting for the right weather, Si2 will takeoff on leg 6/12, in the next 2 hours with Bertrand Piccard at the controls. He will fly for 1190km over about 20 hours arriving at Nanjing, China.

Website at http://solarimpulse.com

I think they have tried to be too clever with the website, I find it hard to navigate, hard to find things. Anyhow no worries.

Hope to catch the video of the take-off in the next couple of hours.
 
Do they connect Si2 to the mains to charge the batteries when it is on the ground for 20 days as it just was? I can't see any mention of it on their website. Purists would argue they shouldn't but the aircraft was in a hanger so might not have got a solar charge on the ground.
 
There is a lot of duplication in the Si2 round the world mission, including two pilots which was needed as one of them just got shingles and had to return to Switzerland to seek medical treatment. I don't know much about shingles but I bet the team involved in this flight were glad they had two pilots!
 
The next leg for Si2 will be to cross the pacific to Hawaii which is scheduled to take 5 days and nights non stop. I don't yet know when take-off is expected or who the pilot will be. I imagine it may take some time to get an acceptable weather window for such a long leg.
 
Solar Impulse 2 (Si2) will take off later today on its longest flight, from China to Hawaii flying for 5 days and nights across the Pacific with André Borschberg at the controls.
Weather looks good, Solar Impulse will make an attempt today May 30th, takeoff 18:00 UTC for the first attempt to cross the Pacific ocean, from Nanjing to Hawaii using ONLY solar power. André Borschberg will fly the zero-fuel airplane on about 8172km (4412NM) for an estimated time of 6 days and nights. Make sure to follow us and sign up on futureisclean.org.
Click to expand...
More info at: http://www.solarimpulse.com/
 
Again I wonder if they charge the batteries on the ground via a plug, which would seem to be a cheat, but they have been on the ground for 8 days now and I think in a hangar so solar charging might not have been possible.
 
Solar Impulse 2 seems to have lost rather a lot of altitude between ROK and Japan over the last hour (only entered the night phase of flight in the last couple of hours) - down to 5kft from 28kft. Concerned looking faces in the control centre.
solar2.jpg
 
I think they said they would be going to lower altitude for the night, the first whole night they have flown on battery power. Batteries are currently 80%, height 5,200ft and the control centre are just telling the pilot he can try to get some sleep.
 
Must be in the light - it's picked up speed.

EDIT nope - bad telemetry - it briefly gave the altitude as 2,000 feet too ... I thought it was going down.
 
gentlegreen said:
Must be in the light - it's picked up speed.

EDIT nope - bad telemetry - it briefly gave the altitude as 2,000 feet too ... I thought it was going down.
Click to expand...
I was searching the site to see if it listed its maximum speed, couldn't find it, but it is not a fast plane!! On a previous leg it had a strong tailwind and managed a more impressive ground speed but air speed is not its forte :)
 
So for example, on this leg it has been flying for 25 hours and has so far gone 1995km a ground speed of 79.8 kph
 
Last edited:
Looks like they have serious electrical gremlins, the plane was heading SE for Tokyo on the website tracking and then suddenly whizzeed off back where it had come from.
 
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