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Well, I was in Salina today and took an hour and went out to watch the Global Flyer land. It was cool to see a bit of history. Wish I could say I got to touch the plane or shake his hand, but no such luck. Flip, I didn't see your co workers, but there were only about 10,000 people out there. I was at the north end of the airport near the Raytheon Hanger. Neat plane, but not FTE sticker on it. It was white with a red engine. Does that mean anything?
See the thing is they wanted it to make it around the world so they painted it white for reliability, then just for fuel efficiency sake they put an underpowered red engine on the thing, later finding that to be a mistake as it almost left them stranded in Hawaii. In fact I seen the news this morning showed video of the pilot getting out of the plane and you could hear him utter the words "shoulda went all white" lol
Probably only made it because the housing for the engine was painted red and just kept pushing the white stuff along. Note also that the rudders that steered the whole thing were also red. Guess red pushes and directs white.