aircraft Solar pilots Solar Impulse 2, are not out of the woods. After having to turn around on its road towards Hawaii, André Borschberg at the controls of the aircraft for this flight six days will have to wait (at least) one week. The aircraft was damaged on arrival at Nagoya.
Too wide (72 meters) to enter the traditional hangars, he could only be protected by its inflatable tent. Despite the safeguards taken by the team, a fin was hit in the hours after landing, while two Solar Impulse had to stay long hours on the tarmac, exposed to wind and rain, in Pending its special hangar sent urgently by China cargo plane.
The solar plane is since Wednesday morning at the shelter under this tent, Nagoya (Central Japan), where he had to stop waiting for good weather .
Technicians prevented flying alone
In the night from Tuesday to Wednesday in Nagoya, this is the first time in its global journey that the aircraft was briefly under a downpour. The Solar Impulse is tight “but it is more secure to protect,” admitted the team. “We had to improvise and our team has experienced difficult times”, said Tuesday the Swiss pilot Bertrand Piccard. “Ten people have been forced to hold the device with their own hands to prevent it from flying off alone,” he explained.
A good ten hours Night work were necessary according to the organizers, to set up this shed which only happened Tuesday evening (local time), together with the logistics team, blocked several hours in Shanghai due to bad weather .
“Solar Impulse 2 is safe under his mobile hangar. Now we can perform maintenance tasks and wait for a new good weather window to steal,” they wrote on Twitter.
The rainy season could delay the next start
The plane is fragile, it does not support turbulence in the air and is not designed to stay thank you from the wind, heat and rain, even to the ground. This device with wings covered with photovoltaic cells had to interrupt his Pacific crossing between Nanjing (Eastern China) and Hawaii to make an unexpected stop in Nagoya Monday because of deteriorating weather conditions.
> takeoff speed of this airplane, “very light and with a vast area of 45 km / h, so at the slightest gust of wind, it can be carried away,” he said.
> The downtime in Japan, where begins the annual rainy season, should be a week, but the team must resign himself to wait. The capricious weather had already forced the plane to stay over a month in China.
Solar Impulse 2 had left on March 9 Abu Dhabi to a world tour of 35,000 kilometers, the both technological challenge and aviation achievement. He then made a stop in Oman, India, Burma.
Video: Solar Impulse landed in Japan because of the weather
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