Solar Impulse Comes To New York: A First Hand Account

[NYCA News]

NYCAviation:

Solar Impulse Comes To New York: A First Hand Account

I have been tracking the Solar Impulse flight across the United States for quite a while now, and when word finally came down on the date and time of the landing at New York, I was excited. Not much keeps me up at 3am, but the chance to see a totally solar powered aircraft was [...]
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[gonzalu]

Solar Impulse Approaches from the south and catches us by surprise. Do not let the videos fool you. It was almost totally black out there. Sans a few strokes by the spotter helicopter, all you could see with the naked eye were safety strobes.



Solar impulse turns sharp left to line up with JFK RWY 22L after the downwind almost straight down the runway. It then lines up and makes a flawless landing!



A few seconds after landing, JFK Fire and Rescue approaches (just in case) as the hard working ground crew of the Solar Impulse project descends on the aircraft to tend to it's stability and safety.

[Landing Lights]

It surprised the small group of us at The Mounds too, Manny. As it flew the downwind leg, it looked to us like 3 very slowly moving red lights. I honestly wouldn't be surprised if there was a spike in UFO reports (though really thats what it was) in southeastern Queens and southwestern Nassau. That was surprise number 1 since last we had tracked it it was west of the Rockaways. Surprise number 2 was when it flipped on its landing lights and hooked a 180 from downwind to final as it became parallel with The Mounds. Needed to make a quick lens change from my fastest and widest lens to my 100-400. Thankfully it moved so slowly that I didn't miss much. I enjoyed being able to talk to their media rep yesterday to hear why they approached JFK that way. The cause was what I expected (the wing tear) but the reason was not.

[gonzalu]

Indeed... I was told that if they approached from the East, they were afraid the tear would get worse longitudinally and so they wanted to be head in to the wind as much as possible and not much side-on. But that was from a ground crew the night of the event.