Wed, Mar 24, 2010
27-Thousand Mile Journey Includes 4,400 Over Water
There is only one category and class of powered aircraft which
has never circumnavigated the globe. An Irishman and colon cancer
survivor plans to fill in that blank, starting Monday.
Norman Surplus In Survival
Suit
By the time you're reading this, Norman
Surplus hopes to have departed Larne Borough Council Sandy Bay
Playing Fields in his yellow MT03 - an open-cockpit tandem
gyroplane - to begin a trip around the world that will take him
until well into the summer.
The trip will total 27-thousand miles, including 44-hundred of them
over water. He'll cross the Saudi desert, the Pacific Ocean, the
Rocky mountains, and the North Atlantic. He'll need to take a big
detour around China, which wouldn't approve him through its
airspace, and he'll have limited range across Russia, where the
Kremlin decreed he'd have to carry an official guide in place of
his collapsible ferry tank.
A cancer survivor since his 2003 diagnosis, the 47-year-old tells
the UK Independent, quote - "The trip is designed to promote hope
and encouragement for cancer sufferers across the globe. I want to
say there can be life worth living beyond the very real challenges
of cancer treatment."
Norman Surplus Flying MT-03
Experimental rotorcraft groups across
the US are scrambling to provide fuel for the Rotax 914, and
logistical support for Norm, when he reaches the US later this
spring. His flight plan is 115 legs in as many days.
While he'll hopes to be the first to do it, he'll obviously set the
bar pretty low for the speed record.
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