AHMEDABAD: Keeping its date with India, the Solar Impulse, on Tuesday landed in Ahmedabad, and will stay parked for four days before leaving on the next leg of its round-the-world tour. It will take off from here early on Sunday to reach Varanasi where it will have a pit-stop until Monday.
Ahmedabad in Prime Minister Narendra Modi's home state of Gujarat and Varanasi, his Lok Sabha constituency, are coincidental choices determined by weather and airspace route fixed for the tour and not political, according to the Solar Impulse team.
Tuesday was hectic for a team of 15 engineers and crew members who prepared the Ahmedabad International Airport for the landing of the aircraft, which is the first solar-powered plane to embark on a world tour.
"The mobile hangars, which are a crucial part of the ground work has been in place and the team is working out last-minute-detailing to accommodate the aircraft. Three of our engineers have also been part of the critical team globally," a spokesperson of ABB, one of the title partners of Solar Impulse told TOI on Tuesday. Altran, the official engineering partners of Solar Impulse is on the ground here.
Among the things planned during the four-day stay in Ahmedabad would be student-engagement programmes, the person said adding that as part of spreading clean technology, the team has been interacting with students world over.
ABB India Managing Director Bazmi Husain said the partnership between ABB and Solar Impulse is a complementary one.
"Solar Impulse dreams big and promotes cutting edge technologies and ABB builds on these dreams to make them accessible for mass application," he said.
Tamara Tursijan, an engineer who is working closely with the team, said: "One of the major challenges we have is to maintain the aircraft everywhere it lands. For this, we cannot rely completely on airports we partner with. But we have a system in place and I see it working well until we complete the tour and beyond."
The ground crew and engineering staff of Solar Impulse check for at least 100 things on the plane, and another crucial part is the mobile hangars, without which the plane would struggle to survive in some harsh conditions, at alien airports as it goes around the world.
"We check for electrical systems, oxygen systems, motor, radio connections, compass system, mission control and other important aspects," Tursijan said.
Terming the mobile hangar a cocoon for the plane, she said: "It is a critical solution as this is a high quality material and even unscheduled stops are factored in." The hangar is made of a special canvas and protects the plane from dust, damages and high temperatures. "Given that this isn't a plane with traditional technologies, not all airports have the infrastructure to protect it," she said.
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