Word: ultralight
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1980-1989
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...late 1970s by John Langford, then a student at M.I.T. and now a researcher at the Institute for Defense Analyses in Alexandria, Va. His dream took the combined brains and brawn of 36 engineers, students, historians, physiologists and athletes -- and nearly three years -- to realize. Like the ultralight craft Gossamer Albatross, which crossed the English Channel in 1979, Daedalus uses human energy and a pair of pedals to drive its propellers. The craft was designed and constructed specifically to challenge Albatross's records for both duration (2 hr. 40 min.) and straight- line distance (22.3 miles). To achieve this...
...South China some households are now bringing in more than $5,000 a year. Best of all, the new prosperity has produced a new resourcefulness. In Henan province, several groups of peasants banded together earlier this year to do what had long seemed unthinkable: buy their own ultralight aircraft for crop spraying. Buoyed by such success stories, the party Central Committee has promised that households may continue enjoying the fruits of the "responsibility system" until the end of the century...
...special congressional election in Georgia, however, simply being a woman-and a widow-was not enough to win. Ultralight Democratic Congressman Lawrence McDonald, chairman of the John Birch Society, died on Korean Air Lines Flight 007. His wife Kathy, 34, believed that the Soviets deliberately "assassinated" McDonald, and ran to serve out his fifth term. But moderate Democrat George ("Buddy") Darden trounced her, 59% to 41%. The national New Right tried but then despaired of helping Kathy McDonald. "To be perfectly candid," said Paul Weyrich, director of the right-wing Committee for the Survival of a Free Congress, "they...
...replay of the third race the winds were feather light once more, and ultralight Australia II, weighing 5,000 lbs. less than Liberty, took to them like a seagull riding the thermals. She beat the American boat by 3 min. 14 sec., the largest margin rung up by a foreign challenger since 1871. John Marshall, the mainsheet trimmer on Liberty, said after the race, "There is a speed difference in these two yachts like I have never seen. Australia II is something new, very thoughtful and very exciting." Asked how he spent the day off after his first loss, Conner...
...only eight years ago that John Moody, lacking the money to buy a conventional light plane, put a go-cart engine on a hang glider and putt-putted 300 yds. through the air. Moody, now a Kansasville, Wis., ultralight-plane dealer, started a fad that last month took Joe Tong of Lecompton, Kans., through the amazed heavens from California to New York. Tong's 250-lb. ultralight plane made the trip in a record 18 days. But Tong was not fast enough to escape arrest for a bad check he had dropped in Grand Rapids, Minn., during the trip...