Some records are fairly easy to achieve, such as those covering the speed between certain city pairs. If you want to get your name on the list of people who have broken an aeronautical speed record, chances are you can. Five of those belong to Anequim: four speed records and one time-to-climb. During the months of August, September and October of last year, no fewer than 23 world marks were set in a variety of record types for powered airplanes. Most records are associated with speed, but there are also categories related to climb performance, range and payload capacity. FAI records are often documented in what appears to be a limitless number of subclasses and record types. While the ultimate speed for powered airplanes has not been broken for decades, there are constant improvements being made to light-airplane designs to make them faster. And while it is difficult to fathom, the space shuttle has traveled at speeds of around 17,500 mph during re-entry into the atmosphere. The rocket-powered North American X-15, though not officially entered in the FAI records, reached 4,519 mph in 1967. The overall top speed recorded by the FAI for a powered airplane was set in 1976 and lies with the Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird at 2,193 mph (3,529 kph/1,906 knots). Of course, that feat has since been blown away. The quest for speed reached a historic milestone in 1947 when Chuck Yeager surpassed the speed of sound in level flight (around 670 mph at 25,000 feet where Yeager was flying), a barrier some thought was unbreakable. Santos-Dumont barely reached 26 mph, still a significant improvement over the Wrights’ first flight. Famed Brazilian Alberto Santos-Dumont set the first speed record recorded by the FAI in November 1906. If we can agree with the popular assumption that the Wright brothers were indeed first to fly, it all started at a measly 7 mph. The constant desire for ever-greater speed resulted in a fairly straight, steep graph for the ultimate top speed achieved in powered airplanes over the first 75 years of flight. With headquarters in Lausanne, Switzerland, FAI’s speed records are recorded in kilometers per hour. Its objectives to “methodically catalogue the best performances achieved so that they be known to everybody to identify their distinguishing features so as to permit comparisons to be made and to verify evidence and thus ensure that record holders have undisputed claims to their titles” have remained through the years. The FAI was formed in October of that year and is still going strong more than 110 years later. The Fédération Aéronautique Internationale (FAI), the international governing body of aeronautical performance records, was suggested by a small group of European aero-club leaders in June 1905, a year and a half after the Wright brothers made their first flights at Kitty Hawk. It was the day they built the second automobile.” The same analogy can be applied to the short history of aviation. Famed NASCAR driver Richard Petty once said, “There is no doubt about precisely when folks began racing each other in automobiles. Speed records have been a fact of life in the world of transportation ever since people starting moving around with anything but their feet. While Skyhawks and Cherokees would be hard pressed to surpass 125 knots, Anequim has been clocked at a mind-blowing 282 knots (324 mph) and achieved no fewer than four speed records this past summer. With lines similar to those of a mako’s body, Anequim CEA-311 is a light-composite airplane powered by a four-cylinder Lycoming IO-360 (albeit modified for Anequim), the same engine installed in many Cessna 172s and Piper Cherokees. The Portuguese word for the mako shark is anequim, a name adopted for a sleek single-engine speedster designed by a team of professors and students at the Center for Aeronautical Studies at the Federal University of Minas Gerais (CEA-UFMG) in Belo Horizonte, Brazil. The result of this evolutionary refinement is super speed. Its tail is similar to the tuna’s, and its musculature is buried near the spine, unlike other sharks with muscles that run alongside the outer surface of the body. Its favorite food is tuna, and its body has evolved to surpass the speed of its prey. Capable of traveling as fast as 60 mph over sustained distances, the mako has been known to spring surprise attacks on humans, though it doesn’t prefer human flesh. The mako shark may not be the biggest, but it is the fastest and one of the most ferocious of all the shark species.
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