- November 27, 2024
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Palm Coast resident Larry Stencel, a 40-year pilot and U.S. Air Force retiree, recently visited the Voyager in the entrance gallery of the National Air and Space Museum, in Washington, DC.
Twenty five years earlier, the world was captivated by the flight of the Voyager, an airplane built to achieve the “last first in aviation”: to fly nonstop around the world without refueling. And Stencel was one of the volunteers who helped to make it happen.
FLIGHT PREPARATIONS
For 9 days, 3 minutes and 44 seconds after departing from Edwards Air Force Base, in Califorinia, Dec. 14, 1986, the world closely followed its progress. As the days clicked off and it started becoming apparent that the crew and team might successfully accomplish their goal, excitement grew until it became contagious.
Prior to the flight attempt, few outside of aviation circles knew about Voyager but during the actual flight attempt, it was showcased on nearly every news outlet worldwide.
Overcoming many problems, the airplane plodded along at an average speed of 116 mph until it finally returned to a dry lakebed at Edwards, 216 hours later. The crew and team had accomplished what they set out to do beginning with an idea on a napkin five years earlier.
Days later, President Ronald Reagan awarded pilots Dick Rutan and Jeana Yeager and the designer, Burt Rutan, the Presidential Citizens Award, in Los Angeles. He said: “You reminded us all that aviation history is still being written by men and women with the spirit of adventure and derring-do.” At a time when the nation needed a boost in morale, Voyager had provided it.
Stencel was an invited guest in the audience during the presidential award ceremony.
Today, he said, he is amazed by the continuing interest in what the crew, the unpaid volunteers and Voyager had accomplished. Not since the infamous flight of the Spirit of St. Louis 59 years earlier had a world attempt by a small airplane so captivate the world.
Initially, all work was toward building and flight-testing the radical airplane design. When it became clear that the airplane was ready, a second crew established and manned Voyager Mission Control on the Mojave, Calif., airport. It was from there that mission planners, weather forecasters, communications experts and others directed the flight 24/7.
Stencel initially set up direct radio communications for local flights and, later, with a plan to provide reliable worldwide communications.
NEAR DISASTER
A little known fact is that the flight nearly ended in disaster just hours before landing as it flew up the west coast of Baja California, Mexico, he said. The crew did not know that the rear engine driven fuel pump had failed because the feed tank was above it.
When the crew descended to find favorable winds, the rear engine stopped, and the airplane became a big glider at night over the Pacific. Just in time, the front engine was restarted after “sleeping” for seven days.
Then, co-pilot Jeana Yeager re-plumbed the fuel system in flight to enable restart of the all important rear engine.
Starting with about 1,168 gallons of fuel in 17 fuel tanks, after the airplane landed only 18.4 gallons of fuel remained. An early decision by weather and mission planners to use a typhoon’s winds over the Pacific proved to be fortuitous. Had they gone the other way, the flight would not have completed the mission.
Stencel consider his association with the Voyager one of the high points of his 45 years of involvement in military and civil aviation.
