It's amazing what couple million site hits and blogs on the internet will do. Turns out this was a complete hoax. Nicely done and still a very cool idea.
Original post: Here is a really impressive joint project between (what looks to be an advertisement for) DHL and a very creative artist named Erik Nordenankar. What a trip that must have been! 55 days of travel to capture enough GPS coordinates to create a self portrait overlaid onto the world. Really well done! But of course I have questions about the GPS logging hardware...
Answers to questions you might be thinking: Yes you really can get a GPS lock in an airplane (we've done it before - don't tell the FAA). Yes, you can get a GPS lock when the antenna (even ceramic) is not facing the sky. But what about power consumption? A conservative estimate for the GPS unit is 50mA per hour not including the logger. My quick calculations say the batteries would need to be ~66Ah (amp hours). Not unbelievable, but can you imagine trying to get something looking like that through a US Airport? Not a chance.
Very well done Erik!
Turns out this project was fictional. A disappointment really. Check the website:
http://biggestdrawingintheworld.com/drawing.aspx
for an update from the author.