Word: wingspan
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Eric Baugher, 29, of Bowie, Md., is Top Gun, chiefly because his toolbox decal jauntily proclaims him so. Throughout the Viper's stunning aerobatics, Baugher stood rooted to the tarmac manipulating a tiny radio that controlled the sleek, alcohol-powered jet, which has a 4-ft. wingspan and a 5-ft.-long fuselage. Baugher was one of 1,139 model-airplane fanatics who trundled 7,000 tiny planes into the Norfolk area to compete in the National Model Airplane Championships. Known widely as the Nats, the show is the largest, most diverse gathering of its kind on the globe...
...rivets -- of those old, often ungainly aircraft that took the first pioneers aloft. Larry Kruse, a dean of Seward County Community College in Liberal, Kans., launched his replica of a 1911 Voisin into the fitful afternoon breezes. An almost perfect twelve grams of craftsmanship with a 13-in. wingspan, the plane is powered by a rubber-band motor turned 2,300 times. The Voisin bucked and churned, its tiny pusher propeller sending it 125 ft. high, its miniature control flaps guiding it across the field for 67 sec., one of three flights that made it second in its class...
...extensive preflight tests, Ethan Nadel, a physiologist at Yale Medical School, verified that the demands placed on the pilot -- the equivalent of running two marathons back to back -- would not exceed the limits of human endurance. Since the wingspan measures 112 ft. and the plane flies just 15 ft. above the ocean waves, even a second's pause would result in a quick dunking. To keep the human engine from sputtering, Nadel, with the Shaklee vitamin company, developed a lemon-flavored cocktail of energy-rich glucose, water and a blend of salts to nourish the pilot throughout the flight...
...Adult Condor No. 9," as California scientists had designated the last known free-flying condor in the state, hovered over a goat carcass last week in the Bitter Creek National Wildlife Refuge, 40 miles southwest of Bakersfield. Sweeping down on its 9 1/2-ft. wingspan, it settled in for breakfast. But the seven-year-old male bird, which had eluded pursuers for seven months, had at last fallen into a trap. Captors hidden nearby set off small explosives that launched a "cannon net" over the condor, and A.C. 9 was grounded for what wildlife experts say is his own good...
...patient hunters are researchers. Their challenging assignment: to begin capturing the last six California condors in the wild. These and 21 other birds in captivity are the only remnants of the once plentiful species, which has a wingspan of nearly 10 ft. and is North America's largest land bird. Fearing that the free birds may not survive much longer, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service last week recommended that they all be trapped and transported to California zoos where the others are housed...