Born To Fly Page 6

  ‘Yep. I’m going,’ I said. ‘You told me to, remember?’

  We had a laugh and a quick chat, and wished each other well, and I promised to tell Dick how the trip went. Maybe, I thought, seeing Dick Smith at the airport was a good omen. I clambered aboard a Boeing 777, laid my suit out flat and settled in.

  Thirteen hours, several movies and some form of reheated sausage casserole later, the aircraft touched down in Los Angeles. I stood in the Customs line and put on my most emotion-free face for the security photo, collected my suitcase and headed for my first connection, a flight from Los Angeles to Atlanta in Georgia. However, somewhere between Los Angeles, Atlanta and the further connecting flight to Wichita, my bag took a vacation. No problem, I still had my suit and a complimentary ‘we lost your bag but there’s absolutely no need to worry’ free toothbrush.

  Having never been to the United States in winter I braved the cold as I ventured to the motel in Wichita, the aviation capital of the world. Other than a Cessna sign on a large white building behind the airport fence, Wichita seemed quiet, bleak and cold; it was a dull city, nothing like I had imagined. It was late Saturday night, and so I went straight to bed. Sunday was put aside for a day of paperwork, looking for other potential manufacturers and sponsors and contacts. I planned to make my way to Cessna first thing Monday morning.

  I ironed my shirt, a lengthy and frustrating process, and that was before I even thought about the tie. I called for the motel shuttle to take me to Cessna headquarters and made my way downstairs. Not until then did I really start to think about just what I would say to Cessna, who still had no idea I was popping in to say hello. Who would I meet and what would they think?

  Next morning the motel shuttle driver and I found our way to Cessna’s head office, but I was a bit worried to notice that the car park was strangely empty. Surely one of the largest aircraft manufacturers in the world would have a few more employees hanging around? We drove around for a little while looking for some kind of activity. Eventually, feeling this was a waste of the shuttle driver’s time, I asked him to drop me off and pick me up later. This turned out not to be a good move.

  I eventually found the front door and rang the bell. Nothing. I waited for a while and called a few numbers hoping to reach the employees I had spoken with on Skype from Australia. Still no answer. After an hour I spotted someone walking to one of the few cars parked outside, wandered over and introduced myself. After a quick chat it turned out it was Martin Luther King Day. No one works on Martin Luther King Day. Another hour later I was picked up and shuttled back to the motel. A whole day wasted and, worst of all, my shirt needed ironing again.

  The following morning when I got there, I found the car park jam-packed with vehicles from end to end. This was more like it. I walked to the front desk and asked to speak with one of the contacts I had previously made. After a short wait, I shook hands with a wide-eyed and surprised-looking young man. I’m not sure what he expected or what he could do, but we chatted casually as we walked throughout the building to his office.

  It turned out that many of the higher-ranked members of Cessna, including those with the authority to act on on our previous conversations, were away. While my new contact made a few phone calls I was taken around the Cessna Citation factory, the many hangars where some of the world’s leading corporate and private jet aircraft are manufactured. At the end of our tour I was told there was not a lot more I could do apart from waiting. I said I would stay until I could talk to somebody who could act on my proposal and, full of hope, I headed back to the motel. While I waited for a call that afternoon I sent dozens of emails and called the people at home who were waiting to see how I went. I couldn’t wait to get back to Cessna, just to sit down and talk.

  That afternoon I received an email from the Cessna employee I had met that morning. It was short, one and a half lines. Cessna were ‘unable to provide support’ in my venture but thanked me for my interest.

  After I read that, I didn’t know what to say. Here I was on the other side of the world and up until now I had used the positive meeting from Cessna in late December to justify everything – the plane ticket, the transfers, the accommodation, the time away from home. All gone now, money down the drain.

  I replied politely, asking whether there was anything else I could do. No reply. That was evidently the end of any connection with Cessna. As I sat in my motel room, I started to get angry. This wasn’t because Cessna had declined any assistance in the way of sponsorship; I was more than used to that by now. It was just that I had come all this way, and here I was five minutes from their head office looking at a computer screen with a thirty-word email they could easily have sent me at home in Australia. That was hard.

  I told everybody at home what had happened then sank back, wondering what else I could do. There was something. I contacted Beechcraft, an aircraft manufacturer also based in Wichita. No answer, but I caught a taxi to the front gate, hopped out and walked into the security booth. The security guy, who really wanted to help, made many phone calls over the next hour, but no joy: to get into the building, let alone to see anyone, I would need prior permission and passport clearances, all of which would take a week.

  For the next two days I sat at the motel desk making phone calls. I spoke with just about every major aircraft manufacturer in the USA and with any aircraft company I thought might be interested in supporting my flight. After all I was in the USA, so I might as well take advantage of it, I thought. I wanted to make sure I didn’t arrive back home and regret not looking at every option.

  Eventually I left Wichita for San Francisco, where I landed after a short stopover in Texas and some dodgy Mexican food for breakfast. I was hoping to visit the world headquarters of GoPro in San Mateo just south of the San Francisco city centre. This was a small bright spot. GoPro high-definition cameras are used in aeroplanes all over the world and it seemed like a great match for Teen World Flight. I had called GoPro from Wichita and felt the best chance of sponsorship would come from visiting them before heading home. I met with an employee, discovering that the two guys I had already contacted were based in southern California. Overall GoPro seemed interested although they could not give me an immediate answer. With nothing more I could do I decided to catch a plane home.

  This had been the first real test of the attitude I had been developing over the previous few months. At the very beginning I had been faced a decision – to fly around the world or not. I had been filled with doubt and had a million questions and I knew I could do one of two things: run away or jump into a deep black hole and give the plan everything I had. It was as basic, as simple as that, a yes or no decision. If I said ‘yes’ I would give 150 per cent until the day the plan fell over completely or the day I landed back in Australia after a successful flight. If I said ‘no’ the whole adventure was over, I would walk away and move on. I would not look back, and I would never have another go. Every time I had a complicated decision to make, at all stages, I made it as simple as possible. So far I had said yes, and now I had a team, I had support and I was beginning to get significant sponsorship. We were getting closer.

  The story was far from over, I knew. I boarded the 777 once again, sat in the window seat and settled in. It was time to relax, to have a drink and watch some movies.

  A couple of hours off the coast of Los Angeles and just east of Hawaii I decided to take a break. The cabin was dimmed and nearly all the other passengers were fast asleep. I opened the window blind and to my consternation saw the pitch-black darkness catch fire. Lightning flashed all around, there was storm after storm. I had never seen storms that were so savage or widespread. I sat watching, my heart in my mouth, for over an hour. What if I got caught in that?

  When I stepped off the aircraft in Sydney I had only one thing in mind. I wanted to ask the pilots about those thunderstorms. At the far end of the baggage claim I spotted the four members of the flight crew, in full uniform, waiting for their bags. I was wearing tracksui
t pants, a shirt with a picture of the baby from the movie Hangover and runners with my headphones around my neck. I looked like a typical nineteen-year-old.

  ‘Can you tell me if those storms just east of Hawaii were severe?’ I asked the captain.

  ‘No, they are always like that,’ he said, ‘Actually they were quite okay tonight. We hardly had to divert off track at all.’

  ‘Oh, okay. Thanks.’ I grabbed my bag and walked away, with more than enough food for thought. I would be in that exact piece of airspace at night in only a few months’ time. Was this the brightest idea I had ever had?

  CHAPTER

  7

  Logistics

  One of the greatest challenges a young pilot faces is increasing his flying time, and building mine was a necessary next step. To qualify for a commercial licence I had to have a minimum of 200 flying hours under different conditions and categories: in cloud, solo, dual or cross-country.

  I didn’t have my own plane, of course, so I had to find other ways of clocking up my hours. Through a connection with the Frogs Hollow Aero Club while I was still in final year at high school, I had met a man named Andrew who had bought a four-seat aircraft and was looking for someone to fly him around as he worked through his flight training. I got the job. My instructor Alan and I were flown to a nearby airport to pick up Andrew’s aircraft. I was aiming to do a little flying around the local area to become comfortable with the new plane, then my brother Adam and I would pick up Andrew the following weekend and fly north to the Sunshine Coast.

  It was a late-model Cessna 182, a high-wing four-seat aircraft. At that stage it was by far the newest and highest-powered machine I had flown, and a lot of fun. I sat and planned a flight from Merimbula north to the Sunshine Coast, a good seven hours’ flying. Still being a low-time pilot I had my brother Adam come along for the ride, thinking two heads are always better than one. We set off early one morning for what was a long but fun and rewarding day. We met Andrew and all became much more comfortable in the aircraft with a few more hours behind us.

  That was the first of many flights in that aircraft and the beginning of a friendship with Andrew and his family. And as that friendship grew, I started to think out loud to Andrew, to tell him about my hopes and fears for my grand plan. I had nowhere near enough experience to fly around the world; even if I did have enough knowledge of actual flying, that was probably not all I would need to learn; I had no aeroplane and no lost city of gold that would enable me to buy or hire one. There were so many things I didn’t know or didn’t have, and I was worried about most of them. But each time I brought up an issue, Andrew raised me a solution. A successful businessman and a new pilot, he had seen and experienced a lot, and had overcome many difficulties. From him I began to learn one of the most important lessons of my impending adventure: regardless of the requirements, challenges and seemingly impossible mountains to climb, all I truly needed was the courage and commitment to pursue my dream. And when we were up against the biggest challenge of all – finding an aircraft – Andrew was there. He offered more than his support; he offered his own Cessna.

  From the beginning we had had a list of options in finding an aircraft, and taking away someone’s private aircraft was right at the bottom of the list, a last resort. But now knowing that we had a plane available if all else failed was fantastic. It gave us peace of mind and a way to keep calm as we looked into the question.

  Bit by bit we were running through and discarding possibilities, and at the same time we were ticking off the days before departure. There were so few left. In fact, we had reached a point when we had to know what aircraft I was taking. We needed a set registration to send on to each location, we needed figures and data to plan the flight. And we needed the aircraft itself so I could do training flights and to organise the internal fuel tanking and associated lengthy approvals. Not to mention that if you intend to fly around the world by yourself, it looks quite good if you actually have an aircraft.

  After phone calls and meetings with Andrew, we decided to accept his more than generous offer and to take the Cessna. I arranged to pick up the aircraft and fly it to the Australian International Airshow at Avalon, where we had a booth to promote the flight and and to look for further sponsorship and supplies. After the show the aircraft would return to Andrew in southern Queensland, where Andrew would continue flying, then five weeks before departure I would pick it up again. Having already spent a lot of time flying the Cessna, only the tanking, fit out of equipment and testing of the plane would have to be completed before my departure. Yes, these were all huge jobs but most of the preparation work could be done without the aircraft itself.

  As the word spread, along with photos of the Cessna, many people wondered about the aircraft choice. Would it be able to complete the trip? I didn’t know, and as I hadn’t spent years evaluating different aircraft in trying situations, my way of finding out was to talk to those who had. I spent hours on the phone and had many meetings with a wide range of people.

  Two, Jim Hazelton and Ray Clamback, stood out. Both were ferry pilots, professionals whose job it was to fly aircraft from A to B, either from the factory to their new home, or from their former location to a new one. A and B were almost always a very long way from each other.

  My circumnavigation was in effect a long list of consecutive ferry flights, all joined to create a constant flight path that stretched around the world. Jim and Ray had flown aircraft to all corners of the globe and had crossed the Pacific Ocean hundreds of times. Ray had nerve-racking stories about ditching aircraft into the Pacific. As he gave tips I listened carefully and took many, many notes; after spending hours with both men I had an immense amount of new knowledge.

  Originally we had looked for an aircraft with a high cruising airspeed in order to reduce the time taken for long hops. Jim assured me that Andrew’s Cessna 182 would be one of the best aircraft for what I wanted to do. If I took Andrew’s aircraft it would be in a completely private deal and in no way affiliated with the Cessna aircraft company in the USA. Andrew’s aircraft could be loaded with extra fuel and still easily stay in balance – an essential for safe flight – and it could fly the longest leg from Hawaii to California with relative ease. The Cessna’s cruising airspeed was not particularly fast, but its ability to shine in other areas was a simple yet acceptable trade-off.

  With Jim’s advice in mind we began working on preparing the 182. We took photos of it, as well as measurements and notes. Although the plane stayed up north with its owner, we were able to plan the ferry tanking and begin the paperwork trail, the registration could now be passed to destinations abroad and flight routing could be finalised using the 182’s cruise speed and fuel burns. We felt we were getting there at last.

  As the Avalon air show neared we started to prepare for the event amongst all the other jobs. With our own booth for the five-day show between the end of February and the beginning of March, we planned to promote the flight both to the commercial sector of aviation and the general public. We had banners, stickers, small globes with the flight route marked, a giant globe, a donated headset to auction and all the forms and information on each level of sponsorship. I packed my bag, got a ticket to Brisbane, and went off to pick up the Cessna.

  The five days at Avalon were fantastic; between talking to hundreds of people every day and managing quick runs outside to see the F22 Raptor fly, there was little time for rest. I took a handful of proposals and walked the aisles of each exhibition hall and within days I had most of the safety equipment sponsored. The interest in the flight, and people’s generosity, was simply fantastic.

  One important person I had to see was Matt Hall. Matt is one of Australia’s leading pilots, with a phenomenal background in the Royal Australian Air Force including flying combat in Iraq. He went on to become Australia’s only competitor in the Red Bull Air Race series, a high-intensity, heart-stopping race revered around the world that makes pilots fly through pylons and go upside down while remain
ing very close to the ground. Matt is also a skilled and experienced air show performer. I had first met him at the Temora airport in central New South Wales during an aerobatics competition. I was a shy, quiet fourteen-year-old, too scared to go and say hello. Someone who knew him took me over and introduced me. I stuttered for a second while he added to the growing number of signatures inside the cover of my logbook.

  Matt had just released a book in time for the 2013 Avalon show and I wanted him to sign my copy. As I waited in line, a guy in a Matt Hall Racing shirt introduced himself as Dave. He turned out to be Dave Lyall, Matt’s operations and media manager. I explained about the around-the-world flight. Now that we had the plane I knew I needed to focus on getting word about the flight out there, which meant learning more about media. I asked Dave a couple of questions and he asked whether I had a media manager. I explained that we had had some local help for a short while but I was now back to doing things myself. Immediately Dave seemed interested, we exchanged details and decided to chat once I was home. And then Dave took me over to say hello to Matt, which was even better.

  Avalon wrapped up on a Sunday. We pulled down what had been our home for the last five days and packed it back into the ute before heading to bed. It had been a great show. The sponsorship drive had gone quite well with a number of new 500 Club members, a wide range of equipment sponsored including nearly all the safety equipment, and a pocketful of business cards representing people and companies who were all interested in having their logo on the aircraft. I had met some fantastic air show performers, one of whom, an American named Bob Carlton who flies a jet-powered sailplane, had shown a keen interest in the flight and promised to meet me at AirVenture in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, during the world’s biggest air show. Bob and his wife Laurie were wonderful people. That was all great, and I had the feeling that meeting Dave would also turn into something quite exciting.