Born To Fly Page 7

  Early Monday morning I returned to what was now a deserted showground. A few workers were pulling down marquees while planes were moving slowly out to the runway and taking off. I went in search for help to move the 182; we pulled it to the apron where engine startup was allowed. I jumped in and taxied to a queue of aircraft, waiting patiently as a number of F-18 Hornet fighter jets took to the sky. It was a blue-sky day, perfect for a flight back to Brisbane.

  As soon as I arrived back in Merimbula I made contact with Dave Lyall. With more time to chat I found out about him and his company, Sports Communication Australia, while at the same time giving him a much more detailed overview of Teen World Flight. I told him what we were aiming to do, what stage we had reached, what challenges lay ahead, how we hoped to use media and much more.

  Soon afterwards I travelled to Sydney to meet with Dave. We discussed how he and his company could help. I soon learned just how complex the media would be; it was too easy to underestimate the level of work required to achieve a successful result. For a start, we would have to contend with constantly differing time zones. That by itself was a major headache, and there were so many other things to consider.

  After a few meetings and a lot of emails, plus supplying an overall plan of action, Dave and Sports Communication Australia joined the team. They were offering help in a large number of areas: sponsorship, media, social media and more. From this point on Dave became a huge part of Teen World Flight. Getting him and his team on board was one of the best decisions I made.

  CHAPTER

  8

  Caught in the hype

  It’s so easy to sit back and dream of an adventure. You can sit and play out endless amazing moments in your head, imagining the achievement of great things you might once have thought were out of your reach. Your mind brushes off the challenges, the hurdles that lie between dreaming and achieving. You are so caught up in the hype of your dream that you fixate on the goal, not the journey.

  If I had known what was ahead, I might have given up before I started.

  We had to face up to problems right from the beginning: problems that ranged from a misdirected email to the unending need for sponsorship. With Dick Smith I spent a lot of time discussing the challenges of flying around the world. There was a long, long list of aviation-related issues, all of which would need to be resolved before departure. But there was one overriding issue that could not be ignored.

  Money.

  The team had drawn up a budget, pages and pages of estimated costings that stretched right across our the kitchen table. I added up each and every item, including the value of equipment that could most likely be borrowed or obtained through sponsorship. Then I looked at the final amount. It was sobering. Had I added an extra zero somewhere? No. I was facing yet another brush with reality. The amount required to carry out my plan was $250,000, which we had estimated was the total, including goods and services.

  Mum and Dad had helped out wherever possible but they could not possibly back me to that extent. The funds would have to be raised through sponsorship. My personal challenge lay in not only raising the funds and successfully completing the flight, but making sure I could return the money Mum and Dad had given me.

  I was learning that actually piloting a light aircraft around the globe was only one part of the challenge facing me. Flying around the world as a teenager involved a sponsorship drive beyond anything I had imagined. I was about to embark on some non-aviation-related life lessons.

  I sat in the office at Merimbula Air Services and carefully put together cover pages for dozens upon dozens of sponsorship proposals. My oldest brother Chris sat for hours writing personalised letters explaining just why various companies would benefit from partnering with Teen World Flight and I would read through each letter before adding it to the ever-growing pile. We had endless lists of companies we thought might be interested. Every day I received several ‘Why don’t you ask…’ calls and after each call the list grew longer. We had a lot of work ahead but if you asked us, we were all over it.

  While we worked away on our carefully constructed production line of proposals, we had partnered with our first major sponsor – Snap Franchising. Snap agreed to take over all ‘web, design and print’, responsibilities, which included a professional approach to potential sponsors. Within weeks we had drafted a sponsorship proposal the size of a small novel. It was fancy, professional and even had its own cardboard folio.

  We had four levels of corporate sponsorship. The 500 Club, the lowest, was extremely successful. After my grandparents became the first to join, membership spread to friends, my old Year 12 high school class, pilots, aviation-related businesses and groups. There were even messages from families on behalf of pilots who are no longer alive, pilots who had a dream to fly around the world.

  The office in my brother’s bedroom began to look like Australia Post’s mail sorting facilities. We had envelopes, stickers, business cards, contact details and proposals going everywhere. We all sat around the kitchen table carefully constructing proposals, folding the flat pack folios and inserting the dozens of information-filled pages. We had cardboard boxes filled with envelopes addressed to potential sponsors, all of which had to be taken to the post office. I would struggle through the door with each box, becoming very aware that the expression of the woman behind the counter was changing with every box: from surprise to astonishment to downright hostility as she realised how many letters she would have to process before the sun went down.

  A few companies replied by letter with variations on ‘Thank you for your proposal but unfortunately at this time…’ but in most cases we heard nothing. Maybe we hadn’t told people enough, we thought. And so we sent more and more information-filled envelopes but the response was far less positive than I had hoped. I asked the advice of people who had experience in seeking sponsorship; after a great deal of discussion we decided that maybe the proposals were too big and we would benefit if they were simplified.

  We tested various methods depending on whom we were approaching. Some companies were targeted with a written proposal while with others we made personal contact, including face-to-face meetings and phone calls. The ‘nos’ were frequent but the joy and relief when someone jumped on board to support the flight were phenomenal, and we took great pleasure in ticking off sponsored equipment from the lengthy list of required items.

  I went to many meetings, talking to a range of people and sharing the story of Teen World Flight and what we hoped to achieve in the coming months. Media interest and coverage were increasing, thanks to the work of Dave Lyall, and this was helping in securing funds. I travelled to aviation events to speak face to face with the representatives of different companies, hoping they would express at least a desire to support the trip. One in nine or ten companies we approached ended up supporting the flight in some way. It was interesting to see which companies provided support; often they were those we least expected, such as Dale and Hitchcock, an earthmoving company based in Canberra, who joined the list of sponsors even though neither owner was fond of light aircraft. I think people were attracted to the spirit of adventure that the whole flight represented, and personal contact also played its part.

  One Sunday, while we were watching aircraft zoom on and off the grass airstrip at Frogs Hollow, one of the members asked to have a chat. It turned out that the Frogs Hollow Aero Club were thinking of running a fundraiser event for my flight and they wanted to know whether I would have any issues if they went ahead. Of course I had absolutely no problem with such an event and I was humbled that they wanted to help out.

  As the weeks went on I rarely heard anything of the fundraiser, just a few questions here and there. Knowing firsthand how much was going on for me at the time, the Frogs Hollow members made it a priority to plan their event without me having to worry about anything.

  Four months before I was planning to leave we gathered at the function room of the local bowling club for the Frogs Hollow Aero Club ‘Your
ticket to a world record’ fundraising dinner. I walked in the door and was blown away: 227 people sat at a series of round tables, filling the room. Globes were spread everywhere, each showing the proposed route for the flight and complete with a toy aircraft hanging above them. Frankie J. Holden from the band Ol’ 55 was the master of ceremonies, and there were not just friends, family and locals, but pilots who had made a special trip just to be there. What happened that night was amazing. It was so much more than an event that provided a significant proportion of the flight’s funding – a whopping $24,000 – it was 227 people showing their support and belief in what I was trying to achieve. I had no idea that a solo flight around the world meant so much to so many people, and I was humble and grateful.

  Taped to the fridge door at home was a calendar that outlined our lives for the near future. It had always been there, covered in day-to-day jobs, important reminders and regular birthdays, thanks to a family big enough to populate a small village. It had been a great way to keep track of meetings and deadlines during the planning of the flight but what began as a scribbled note here and there had now become a constant flow of things to do and places to be.

  One morning I wandered into the kitchen and stared into the open fridge hoping breakfast would jump out at me. It didn’t. I closed the fridge door, accepting my misfortune, and was blinded by highlighted yellow boxes on a newly printed calendar. ‘June 30’ – Ryan departs.

  The flight had made the calendar, there was six weeks remaining and there was a lot to do. What I didn’t know was just what these six weeks would bring.

  I had meetings left, right and centre, always finding myself on a plane or sipping a Red Bull, adhering to my restricted ‘P plate’ speed limit en route to Sydney. There were lunches where I had to don a tie and tell the story of what I was about to attempt, knowing I should have been at home attending to the small mountain of jobs and paperwork.

  The phone was ringing constantly. Often the caller was Ken and we discussed flight planning, preparation and the last minute requirements; if it was Dave we talked about media, sponsorship, public speaking or – yet again – further preparations to have everything in order for departure.

  We continued the sponsorship drive, gathering more and more support as the time went on. I began to speak with sign writers, defining the way we would display the sponsors on the aircraft itself to acknowledge their generous support.

  We finalised the route, convinced after nine months of adjustments that we had taken each and every comment and recommendation into account and created one of the safest and most sensible around-the-world flight routes. Our departure point had changed several times, from Sydney to Canberra and elsewhere and back again. Finally, after taking in a long list of aviation and non-aviation related factors, we chose Wollongong because it was just south of Sydney and had a thriving small airport.

  An issue soon arose about the date when we would return to Wollongong. Initially we had decided on 14 September, but soon afterwards Prime Minister Julia Gillard announced that the federal election would be held that very day. We altered the flight route over the following weeks, working to take out days and move the arrival date back one week to the weekend of 7 September. The schedule was tight but it was possible – always bearing in mind that safety was the number one priority and that with any number of unknown delays this arrival time might not be met anyway.

  I heard about a course called HUET – Helicopter Underwater Escape Training – otherwise known as ‘learn to swim upside down out of a helicopter without sinking’. Overseen by Westpac Life Saving, the course was held in a small classroom close to the Westpac Life Saver hangars that overlooked the Pacific Ocean. A small class including pilots and members of a television crew sat and listened to the theory of how to survive an aircraft ditching into the water. We had the common goal of not drowning in the practical pool assessment later that afternoon.

  After successfully escaping a replica of an overturned helicopter cockpit, both visually and while blindfolded, we clambered from the pool to learn about the life raft. I was last to undertake the practical task – pulling myself from the water into an inflated raft wearing a cumbersome life jacket. I felt like I was back in P.E. in primary school, once more a highly undertrained and far from malnourished kid with a poor physique being asked to do something way beyond my capabilities.

  I hung on the edge of the life raft, with five or six classmates waiting inside for me to haul myself in. Not wishing to try this more than once I gave it everything I had. I turned out to be a little physically fitter than I had been in primary school and I literally flew out of the water and into the life raft, clearing the first guy before landing in the lap of the blonde TV presenter. Safe to say I took my HUET certificate home with pride.

  We continued work on preparing the Cessna 182, using measurements of the cabin to source additional aluminium fuel tanks that would be mounted inside the aircraft. Not being able to find exactly what we wanted we designed a tank from scratch, one that would be manufactured and approved specifically for the flight. We looked at all aspects of the aircraft – speed, range, overall performance in varying configurations and much more, including reading the avionics pilot manuals from cover to cover. We estimated the flight times so we could pinpoint where aircraft maintenance would be required, and once that had been done we started working through the legalities of international maintenance on an Australian registered aircraft.

  Ken travelled across to Merimbula for a weekend. We spent the whole time planning the flight – hardly anyone’s idea of a relaxing few days on the beaches of the Sapphire Coast. We had planned, fundraised, worked through countless problems and finalised the route but not once had I picked up a detailed map, and it felt wrong.

  Ken had assured me that putting together the flight logs – the actual paper flight plans that defined each leg’s finer details and times that would be carried in the aircraft – was not a huge job in comparison to the others still yet to be completed. I had trusted him, but with a nine-kilogram box of maps known as charts sitting on the kitchen floor I soon wanted very much to have this particular task behind us.

  Fortified by a constant flow of coffee and hot chocolate, we spent over twenty-four hours unravelling maps and almost literally joining the dots, picking flight routes that would comply with international airspace regulations while also acknowledging the limitations of the aircraft. We started at Wollongong, my departure point, and finished the first leg at Norfolk Island in the Pacific Ocean east of Australia.

  The world is covered in aviation ‘waypoints’, precise positions in the sky specifically for use within aviation navigation, all labelled with three- or five-letter designators that form a combination of letters that aren’t actual meaningful words, but that can be pronounced: for example, ‘DODUX’. The list of waypoints grew as the night went on and every leg of flight planning was completed. There were literally thousands.

  I ventured to my doctor with a list of countries in hand and after an hour we had a pile of prescriptions for the required immunisations. My now pincushion-like self went for the tablet option wherever possible.

  The lounge room floor began to disappear under the equipment laid across it, from clothes to an immersion suit and emergency equipment. The lounges were covered with paperwork: copies of my passport, proof of immunisations, countless bundles of visa paperwork, bank account statements, aircraft maintenance documents, flight plans. There was even a letter of support from our local MP, Andrew Constance, which he said might be used if I ever found myself in a sticky situation and needed some form of official-looking written support.

  Dave, his colleague Lloyd and I met regularly to discuss media issues. How would we share the flight with the thousands of interested onlookers, who would be in charge of what, what I would need to do while I was away, how publicity for sponsors could be organised. We also needed to work out the chain of command, and what would happen in the event of an emergency, which involved set
ting up and thoroughly exploring a crisis action plan with family and involved team members. We didn’t share these crisis meetings with our wider team group, which by now seemed to measure in dozens, if not hundreds, but kept them to the original seven or so members: sharing that information around would only have created more stress. There were also at least two exciting sponsorship and media possibilities to be explored. Telstra were showing interest in coming on board as sponsors: having one of Australia’s premier telecommunications companies would be enormously useful. We had several meetings and things were looking very promising. We were also talking to the Channel 9 current affairs program 60 Minutes.

  Finally everything seemed to be coming together. The Cessna 182 was living in Redcliffe just north of Brisbane where Andrew its owner was undertaking his flying training. We had travelled to Brisbane a number of times to talk about the 182 and what would be involved in using it for the world flight. We had decided not to pick up the aircraft until the last possible minute so that Andrew could get the most out of his training; after all, he would be without it for nearly three months. We needed to find several items before we could pick up the plane, too: not impossible, just time consuming.

  My aim, over and above the goal of a circumnavigation, getting a world record and promoting youth in aviation, was to make sure this was an enjoyable experience for everyone. I didn’t want anyone to be put in an uncomfortable position just to see Teen World Flight become a success. This included family, friends and of course Andrew, who after all had been more than generous in lending us his plane.

  On a Monday morning six weeks before departure, Andrew sent us through the final aircraft hire agreement. I printed off the document, sat with Mum and Dad at the kitchen table and read through each section. I soon realised that there was a major problem.

  One clause in the agreement dealt with the requirement that nobody should be at financial risk due to the nature of the flight. It was not at all unreasonable, but I could not guarantee it. Andrew, the owner of the aircraft, was clearly at risk; so were my backers, and so were Mum and Dad. We had talked about the issue of fiscal security, of course, but the difference between a theoretical possibility and a legal requirement was now all too evident. Having planned the flight and even written a risk mitigation report for the Civil Aviation Safety Authority, I should probably have known better.