Now here's a story I wish somebody had tipped me off to. Early this month, the AAI Corporation, of Hunt Valley, a leader in the development of unmanned aircraft, flew an unmanned airplane into the core of Hurricane Noel as it blew up the East Coast. It was the first time anyone had successfully flown a craft like this into a hurricane. And nobody tipped off the newspaper.

The "Aerosonde" unmanned aerial system (UAS) - a small, lightweight, propeller-driven "pusher"-type craft carrying weather instruments and communications gear, has a 9.5-foot wingspan. It was launched on Friday Nov. 2 from the NASA Wallops Flight Facility, on Virginia's Eastern Shore. It flew as far as 500 miles from Wallops, and straight through the center of the storm at altitudes between 300 and 500 feet according to a NASA release. It zipped around out there for 7 1/2 hours in 80 mph winds, skimming just 300 to 500 feet above the waves. And there were some formidible waves out there, as surfers all along the coast found out.

AAI controlled the flight from Wallops, and relayed the data back to the National Hurricane Center in Miami to aid their forecasting.  It's valuable data from where the sea meets the atmosphere. It apparently tells forecasters a lot about what's going on in a hurricane. And it's data that manned aircraft will never be able to recover. It's just too dangerous to fly that low in a hurricane. Drop-sondes - the instrument packages the Hurricane Hunters drop into the storms from higher altitudes are useful, but having a little instrumented airplane you can send anywhere you need it without risking a human life will be a boon to forecasters.

Here's the NASA release on the flight. Here's AAI's version. And here's a nifty video.