SANTA PAULA : Fliers to Begin Filming Nation From a Glider

Crammed side by side in a 3-foot-wide cockpit, two Portuguese adventurers are scheduled to take off from the Santa Paula Airport today on a three-week trip to cross and recross America in a motorized glider.

Their mission is to film and photograph winter in America from the air for Portuguese television and one of their country’s glossy monthly news magazines. They plan on flying over the Rockies and then following the entire length of the Mississippi, as well as taking a look at Yosemite and the Grand Canyon.

“This is a dream come true for us,” said Eduardo Albarran, wearing a blue jumpsuit decorated with the patches of the sponsors underwriting the trip. “We’ve been planning this since the summer.”

Albarran and his partner, Miguel Santana, is flying a newly developed motorized glider. The plane can take off without the air of a tow plane and regain altitude using the motor when necessary.

Made of a plastic material, the lightweight plane has a 50-foot wingspan and a super-efficient motor that runs on unleaded gasoline and burns only three gallons of fuel an hour--when needed. On one recent 50-minute trip from Palmdale the team only used the motor for 12 minutes, Albarran said.

“This is really a ‘green’ plane,” said Albarran, referring to the glider’s energy efficiency. “It’s the plane of the future.”

Albarran risked ending the adventure before it began when he flew the glider to Santa Paula from Ontario, Canada, where it had been shipped. He took off from Canada just as the eastern United States was hit by record cold temperatures.

Albarran had to fly into Columbus, Ind., in the middle of a blizzard at night without navigational aids. A fuse had blown in the cockpit, so he had to read his instruments by match light as he radioed the town’s airport.

“The guy in the tower asked where I was and I didn’t know,” Albarran said. “I was flying about 250 feet above a road and he told me to follow it into town, then hang a right at the third stoplight. He got me to the airport OK.”

On the first leg of their trip, the pair will fly first to San Jose to meet with Portuguese boosters, then fly across California and the western United States on their way to Florida. From Florida, they will fly back across the United States and eventually end their trip in Denver.