Qualla: The Spirit of Butts' Farm

The Spirit of Butts' Farm: Introduction

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

At 22:15 UTC on the night of 9 August 2003, on the cliffs above Cape Spear on the southeastern tip of Newfoundland, a small balsa-and-fiberglass model airplane with a 72-inch wingspan caught the air and began climbing into a fair Atlantic westerly. It was alone. The team that had built it - Maynard Hill and the volunteers of the Society for Technical Aeromodel Research - watched its red navigation light shrink into the dark and lose itself in the cloud. The aircraft had a 0.6-cubic-inch four-stroke engine, an autopilot, an Argos satellite telemetry tag, and 1.4 gallons of fuel. Thirty-eight hours, fifty-two minutes, and nineteen seconds later, it touched down on Mannin Beach near Clifden, Ireland. The first model aircraft ever to cross the Atlantic had 1.5 fluid ounces of fuel left in its tank - about forty-four minutes of flight time.

The Spirit of Butts' Farm: Maynard Hill's Twenty-Five Records

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The man behind the project was Maynard Hill, a retired metallurgist from Maryland. By the time he attempted the Atlantic, Hill had already set twenty-five world records in model aviation and had been inducted into the Model Aviation Hall of Fame in 1977. The Atlantic was his whit...

The Spirit of Butts' Farm: The Engineering of a Lonely Crossing

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The aircraft was tiny by manned-aircraft standards - 72 inches long, 74-inch wingspan, weighing just under 11 pounds at takeoff with fuel. The engine was an O.S. Engines FS-61 four-stroke modified almost beyond recognition: smaller valves to reduce fuel consumption, a custom carb...

The Spirit of Butts' Farm: Forty-Four Minutes from Empty

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The flight covered 1,881.6 statute miles in a straight line - exceeding both the FAI world record for distance and for duration in its category. The use of an autopilot and satellite telemetry was new enough that the FAI created new record categories to accommodate what Hill's te...