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.

FMI: www.gyroxgoesglobal.com