Model airplane legend Maynard Hill dies at 85

Hill, a member of the Academy of Model Aeronautics (AMA) Hall of Fame and former president of the academy, earned 25 world records for speed, distance, and altitude over a long career of modeling. He led a team that flew a balsa-wood model airplane carrying 5.5 pounds of Coleman lantern fuel from Newfoundland to Ireland, a distance of 1,882 statute miles, on Aug. 11, 2003.

Hill was 77 at the time of the transatlantic flight, and legally blind. Yet he worked on model after model perfecting the design that eventually stayed aloft 38 hours, 52 minutes, and 14 seconds before landing within feet of its intended mark across the ocean. He dyed his glue red to better see it while working.
The team, known as the Society for Technical Aeromodel Research, built and tested dozens of versions of the aircraft before sending out Trans Atlantic Model 5 (TAM 5)—the fifth model to attempt the transatlantic flight over the course of two years. Before TAM 5 made its landmark journey , four models had failed to reach the mark, with flights that ranged from 17 ½ minutes to eight hours.

Most of the flight testing took place at the farm of pilot Beecher Butts, so Hill called the transatlantic model The Spirit of Butts’ Farm . The successful flight was controlled by radio and GPS navigation; David Brown, then president of AMA, glided the aircraft in for a successful landing. The flight marked Hill’s twenty-fourth and twenty-fifth world records, for distance in a straight line and duration.