We didn’t give up. I didn’t sleep that night, just lay awake thinking how this latest hurdle could be overcome. The next morning I called everyone I knew, beginning with Dick Smith, seeking answers. I spoke with successful businessman and accomplished pilots, the same people who had offered wisdom and support over the previous months. They could all see the issue, but the problem appeared to be insoluble. What was asked was not unreasonable; the clause did meet the stipulation that the flight should be seen as a positive experience, not one that involved widespread risk or liability for its supporters. However, in the rush to get ready for the flight, with so many other issues demanding attention, I had not considered what its finer details implied. What I thought it would be and what it was turned out to be completely different.
Now I had to face facts. Six weeks to the day before departure, we no longer had an aeroplane.
I sat at the kitchen table like a zombie. I felt sick. I called Ken and told him the whole story, from the reasons behind losing the aircraft to what each individual person had said about the issue. My voice was shaking and even though I thought I was doing okay he could easily tell I wasn’t. We had worked through so much to find ourselves so close to the departure, everything was coming together in only the last week, yet all of a sudden the most vital puzzle piece had gone missing. Everything else remained, yet without an aircraft it was all useless.
At the very beginning I had made a ‘yes or no’ decision based on whether I would attempt to fly around the world or not, whether I would take on the endless challenges that came up along the way. I had said yes. As part of that deal, whenever there was an issue I could never say no and just give up, not until we had tried absolutely every avenue and there was no way the issue could be fixed. With this in mind giving up was simply not an option. The only thing to do now was to find another aircraft, one we could secure without the requirements faced with the previous Cessna, one that could be covered solely by our fantastic insurance sponsor Julian and the team at QBE Insurance.
I called everyone I could think of, from team members to aircraft companies. We sat as a family and looked at the options; several people I called were also thinking of potential possibilities. One or two even offered their own aircraft and, while this was a phenomenally generous gesture of support I couldn’t accept, mostly because their aircraft were not suitable.
With pages of notes piling up in front of me I called an aviation company from Melbourne, one of several listed down the page. I explained the issue once more, the guy on the other end of the line was very interested and more than that, he had an idea. He told me that he knew of a fairly new model four-seat Cirrus, very similar to the aircraft in which I had completed the section of my training that allowed me to fly through clouds and weather solely using the instruments. This plane had been sitting in a hangar near Melbourne for quite a while and needed to be flown.
A session of phone tag later I was in contact with the aircraft owner, a warm and friendly woman, Tina, who had previously flown the aircraft herself. I explained the issue again – I was good at it by now – and her response was fantastic. She saw absolutely no issue in the aircraft being hired for the flight. There were a few conversations to be had in regards to the journey, preparations and the team behind me, but the flight itself was not an issue. The aircraft had been affiliated with QBE Insurance before and neither Tina nor her husband saw any problem with the coverage on offer.
Two days later Mum, Dad and I set off towards Melbourne to have a look through the aircraft and to meet Tina. We stopped at the airport, not only to have a look at the Cirrus but to speak with the aircraft engineer who had been completing all the maintenance. Then we drove into the Melbourne CBD and met Tina and her husband. We sat and chatted away for hours as if we were all long-lost friends. They were keenly interested in the flight and asked lots of questions, and were happy to be a part of the adventure.
We finally said goodbye as we were all facing a long drive home, and after pulling out of the car park I immediately called everyone I could think of to update them. Only three days after losing the aircraft, after sitting at the kitchen table wishing I was anywhere but there, wondering whether it was all over and whom that would affect, we had another aircraft. What was more it was fast, and new, and though we would have to work hard to make necessary changes such as tanking, changing the sign writing, registration and the flight plan itself, things could not have been better.
I needed to apply for a permit allowing the aircraft to fly, even though it required scheduled maintenance. I wanted to take it back to Merimbula where it would be serviced at Merimbula Aircraft Maintenance. Rex, who ran it, and his colleagues Eddie and Glynn had already given us an enormous amount of support, and over the next few weeks they would become even more closely involved. Through a friend I contacted an airline pilot who owned and flew his own Cirrus and asked asked whether he would travel with me to Melbourne and fly back in the Cirrus to Merimbula. I figured that the time in the air was best spent learning as much as possible from someone who knew the machine well. He had absolutely no problem with this and I agreed to contact him again once I had the permit to fly the plane back to Merimbula in my hands.
It was Monday morning, seven days after we had lost the Cessna, only two days before we planned to pick up the Cirrus and five weeks to the day before departure. I was sitting in the lunchroom of Merimbula Aircraft Maintenance and morning tea, which is always full of laughs, had just finished, leaving me peace and quiet to work on the permit application form. If we submitted it that day we would have it back in time for our flight from Melbourne. As I filled in the details my phone rang, it was the engineer who maintained the Cirrus. He had decided to undertake a ‘bore scope’, an inspection of all the internal parts of the engine using a camera on a long and flexible arm. The aircraft had been sitting for quite a while and although the engine had been turned over it was rarely flown. With the long overwater stretches in mind he thought it would be best to have a look. What he found was devastating. Corrosion on a gear tooth embedded well inside the jungle of moving parts rendered the aircraft unserviceable.
Heartbreak. I was gutted. What now?
We brainstormed, we phoned people, we thought of every option possible. Underneath the determination to get this right was a sense of panic, almost hopelessness. How many second chances would I get? How long could we play this game before time ran out and safety became compromised? Was this a sign? With safety as the number one priority and the inability to move the departure date further away, any compromise would mean the flight was over for good. The flight had always been marketed as Teen World Flight; the record was to become not only the youngest but also the first teenager to fly solo around the world, which would become a little more complicated if I turned twenty before finishing the flight. Along with my age, the flight planning including accommodation, fuel, customs and immigration requirements amongst a hundred other pre-planned items were now set in stone, trying to move them all would be an absolute nightmare, if not almost impossible.
We had two courses of action we could take. One was to source another aircraft, the other was to ask a team of volunteers to completely rebuild the engine of the Cirrus. Both looked out of the question.
I made a few more phone calls, including one to a pilot named David who lived in northern New South Wales. I had borrowed an aircraft from him for the Wings Over Illawarra air show in Wollongong earlier in the year; without the 182 this had been a way of having an aircraft on our stand to create further interest in Teen World Flight. At the time David had had a very new model Cirrus for sale, and we had considered this as an early possibility. However, once we knew that buying a plane was not possible we had moved on. But now with catastrophe looming I called David and told him the story, explaining what had happened with the last two aircraft and what that meant for the flight. Although I couldn’t purchase his Cirrus outright I asked whether he would be willing to hire it to me for the duration of the trip
. David said he would have to think it over.
That afternoon David called back. He was willing to hire out the aircraft although we would have to tick a few boxes before the deal was finalised. These were items we had already faced, including insurance and hire agreements, as well as providing David with a general overview of the flight. We worked flat out for days juggling paperwork and phone calls, trying to make everyone comfortable with the situation.
We were finished within a week. Now we had an aircraft, an aircraft that had recently been flown, tried and tested. The perfect aeroplane for the trip.
CHAPTER
9
Nearly there
At last we had a plane, and a good one, a four-seat low-wing Cirrus that was a leader in its class. A very safe aircraft, too: its composite moulded fuselage included a full-sized parachute for use in dire emergencies.
The day after finalising the Cirrus I packed my bags to go to Sydney where my manager Dave and I had meetings with both 60 Minutes and Telstra. 60 Minutes was doing a story on the adventure and Telstra had agreed to become the principal partner. Not only was Telstra a sponsor offering a financial contribution – much needed at the time – but they were also offering their telecommunication resources. These, from a mobile phone to the installation of a satellite phone and tracker in the Cirrus, were absolutely vital. Meetings with the 60 Minutes producers and Telstra were aimed at giving each organisation a deeper and better understanding of Teen World Flight, exactly what a solo around-the-world flight would entail.
After seeing Telstra and 60 Minutes I flew to Tamworth in central New South Wales to meet David, the owner of the Cirrus. Dave was a great guy with a solid background in flying Cirrus aircraft, and we wandered into the hangar where I met my new best friend – A 2009 Cirrus SR22 with the registration VH-OLS, or Victor Hotel Oscar Lima Sierra. It was white with black and grey decals splitting the blank fuselage into a work of art. It was sleek, without rivets, struts or wires: a machine that the Wright Brothers could have only dreamed about. The thick composite propeller sat still, seen easily from the interior that was equipped with very advanced avionics, and everything else that was needed for a young pilot to travel the world alone. It was beautiful.
It was also sitting high on jacks because it was halfway through its major inspection, the one that was undertaken every 100 flying hours. While it was being finished off David and I went flying in another Cirrus, talking over the main points of the aircraft. We got in, pushed the throttle forward and took to the sky. For me a Cirrus was an absolute rocket ship, capable of speeds around the circuit that were faster than anything I had experienced to date. It was also comfortable. The stick sat off to one side and with the door closed, my arm comfortably rested in a natural position. With little more than a thought, the plane would dart about the sky. I was hooked. One short flight in the now ready VH-OLS with an instructor the next day and I was ready to go. I fuelled up, we shook hands and I thanked David yet again, waved goodbye and took off.
I flew to Caboolture, north of Brisbane, where I was to take part in an Advanced Pilot Seminar or APS. Most of the time I was trying to work out the intricacies of the new plane and taking note of such things as its cruise speed, fuel burn and overall performance. I touched down, very narrowly missing a flock of birds, tied the aircraft down, covered it up and headed to a motel.
The Advanced Pilot Seminar focused on correct engine management techniques. With one engine and a lot of ocean to cross I listened carefully and took notes. The course was being run by David Brown, who had organised my initial talk at the AusFly air show and the APS crew. Advanced Pilot Seminars had just been introduced into Australia, and David had help from John Deakin and Walter Atkinson who had run these seminars in the USA. John had near on 40,000 flying hours and a lot of very good stories, many of which were hilarious. The knowledge he and Walter had about the aviation industry was simply phenomenal.
David, John, Walter and the crew looked after me extremely well. They knew what I was up against and offered as much advice as they could, including some one-on-one conversations when the weekend was over. They came to the airport with me to look at the Cirrus, we said our goodbyes and promised to keep in touch. I took off with my head crammed with information, knowing that I was much better informed than I had been before coming to Caboolture.
I flew south to Port Macquarie on the mid north coast of New South Wales where I had completed my instrument rating training; I needed to spend a couple of days refreshing these skills and applying them to the new aircraft. We flew a few navigation exercises and covered the skills I had learned not so long before. The Port Macquarie stopover was important; not only did I brush up my skills but it boosted my confidence as a pilot when I was under so much other pressure.
From Port Macquarie I headed home, flying the Cirrus through the clouds to Merimbula. Landing there after all the stress, doubt and worry was a triumphant moment. I now had a beautiful and very advanced aircraft which I would fly from Wollongong in just over a month’s time. It represented the perfect end to the two hardest weeks of my life.
The biggest issue we now faced was altering the already completed planning to suit the Cirrus. This involved changing such things as registration numbers and speeds on a flight plan. These were challenging enough, but storing and carrying fuel inside the aircraft proved an even bigger issue.
A week of calculations and phone calls led us to a solution that we felt would work. We would remove the rear seat and install a 600-litre fuel ‘bladder’, a soft baglike tank that would lie deflated and flat when empty. When full it would be secured by a carefully structured and designed network of ratchet straps. We began on the paperwork, organising the EOs, or engineering orders, to have the modifications on the certified aircraft approved. We had weight and balance figures calculated – the maximum weight with which the Cirrus was allowed to take off – but would have to increase that by 20 per cent because of the extra fuel and equipment we were carrying. We measured the aircraft and sent the figures through to the sign-writer to allow the sizing of the sponsor decals; although we continued to seek sponsorship we needed to begin printing decals for the plane. The addition of Telstra to the list of sponsors had been fantastic and a phenomenal help, but we were still far behind our allocated budget, a sum of money that had only ever been based on estimates and educated opinions. We were lucky that through a friend at Merimbula airport, Bruce, we were able to have the sign-writing organised and applied by Bruce himself. We had to get the Cirrus as ready as possible for what would be a very important media day.
I flew the Cirrus to Wollongong to meet Dave. We were about to embark on some filming with 60 Minutes as well as flying beside the Channel 9 news helicopter to gather some air-to-air shots of the plane that had now been christened the Spirit of the Sapphire Coast.
The night before we started filming with 60 Minutes we had dinner with the crew; I would meet them in several places as I flew around the world. My story had been assigned to Charles Woolley, a long-serving member of the 60 Minutes family. Although seen regularly reporting on serious stories and current affairs, Charles Woolley was just a normal friendly guy. He had opinions on different things, spoke about family and friends, liked to have a beer, expressed his hatred and frustration towards leaf blowers. If I could somehow retell his jokes about them I would, but I can’t.
We met at the airport the next morning early enough for 60 Minutes to take a shot of the hangar doors opening as the sun rose. I flew the Cirrus alongside the news chopper, with senior news reporter Mark Burrows in the right-hand seat, to gather some footage for the evening bulletin. The whole morning was a constant rush, not only because of the filming – we also had to kit out the Cirrus with several cameras so 60 Minutes could capture the entire solo journey. Dave’s amazing organisation saw interviews with television, newspapers, magazines and radio all crammed into one day. That afternoon Charles Woolley, or Uncle Charles as he suggested I could call him, climbed into the Cir
rus and we flew south to Merimbula. The rest of the crew drove by road, all meeting the next morning for a final day of pre-flight filming.
Within a few hours we had visited my old school, Sapphire Coast Anglican College, and filmed a talk with the kids. We then travelled home where Mum and Dad were waiting. With Mum being a clean freak at the best of times, the fact that Charles Woolley was popping over to say hi made things interesting. Any family gathering meant that the house had to be spotless, let alone having a 60 Minutes TV presenter come and visit. There was not a speck of dust in that house.
I stood back after finishing my filming and watched as Mum and Dad were interviewed; it hit me suddenly that Charles Woolley from 60 Minutes was sitting at our kitchen table. Wow. He was genuinely interested in the flight and we all responded to his warmth and curiosity.
And now, after so much practice, once again we packed my bags, carefully checking and double-checking everything. The last of the equipment was gathered and piled at the door. Some of the remaining decals were applied to the aircraft. Emails were sent, good wishes were received and the days on the calendar were disappearing.
Further talks with our new partner Telstra, with their goal to connect me in every way possible, saw the installation of a satellite phone into the aircraft. This allowed long-distance communication when the HF radio did not work or when other means of contacting family and team members failed.
Born To Fly Page 8
