Word: yeager
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...determined not to be waved off. "You betcha I'm going to land the first time," he said, and brought his graceful, eye-catching craft in for a perfect landing. Rutan, a retired Air Force lieutenant colonel, could be excused for being impatient. He and his copilot, Jeana Yeager, 34, had just spent 111 hours aboard the experimental aircraft Voyager without stopping or refueling, flying 11,600 miles and unofficially breaking a 1931 record of 84 hours aloft and a 1962 mark of 11,337 miles in a closed circuit...
Despite that lofty feat, last week's flight was only a warm-up. In September, Rutan and Yeager, an experienced pilot and design engineer, will try to shatter the open course record of 12,532 miles by flying Voyager on a twelve-day, nonstop, unrefueled flight around the world...
...September mission will be the ultimate test of both Voyager and its pilots. On their 4 1/2-day flight, Rutan and Yeager were confined to a cabin that is only 2 ft. wide at its narrowest and 7 1/2 ft. long, just enough room for the passenger to lie alongside the pilot, who can sit only halfway upright. While spelling each other at the controls during their 580-mile laps over the California coast between San Luis Obispo and San Francisco, the pilots could not relax; Voyager is so light that it is easily buffeted by the wind and needs constant...
Voyager began life in 1981 as a sketch on a napkin at the weather-beaten Mojave Inn, near the airport. The sketcher was Burt Rutan, 43, an engineer with an established reputation for building quirky-looking but aerodynamically ingenious planes. With his brother Dick and Jeana Yeager (no relation, believes Jeana, to famous Test Pilot Chuck), Rutan had decided to attempt the around-the-world flight...
...after day Rogers made minor corrections in his commission's course, added and subtracted subtleties, coped with small explosions (Pilot Chuck Yeager's absence from commission meetings became a public issue). The commission's speed and competence have been praised on all sides. Rogers' experience is no small part of the success...