Around the world in a microlight
29 December 2003
In celebration of the first decade of the new South Africa, two men have set out from Cape Town to circumnavigate the globe, flying over 80 000 kilometres, visiting 50 countries and crossing six continents - in what many would consider impossibly small aircraft. Their mission: to spread the word about a country "alive with possibility".
South Africans Ricky de Agrela and Alan Honeyborne are no lightweights when it comes to long-distance aero-adventuring. Their taste for roughing it in the sky has seen them undertake marathon microlight expeditions across Mozambique, Namibia and Zimbabwe - and, of course, South Africa.
In their previous venture, over two weeks in December 2002, they tracked two of southern Africa's most important rivers, flying some 3 400km from the mouth of the Orange River on South Africa's Atlantic seaboard, right the way up to its source high in the Lesotho Highlands, over the Drakensberg's Mount Aux Sources and back down
the Tugela River to where it enters the Indian Ocean.
The terrain on this trip varied from barren desert to sub-tropical forests to mountains at over 11 000 feet – more than enough to push man and machine to the limit.
That trip was just an appetiser, however, for what the duo have just embarked on: a circumnavigation of the globe, traversing Africa, the Middle East, Asia, Australia and North, Central and South America before returning to Cape Town.
That's well over 80 000 kilometres – and about 18 months - of flying, and will, if successful, pretty much double the current world record for the longest unsupported flight in "trike"-type microlights, set in 1999/2000 by another South African, Mike Blyth, and his Swiss partner Olivier Aubert.
- Find out more, get the latest updates, follow the journey on Freedom Flight
To give you an idea of what De Agrela and Honeyborne are up against: Blyth and
Aubert took off from Buenos Aires, Argentina on 27 March 1999, covered South and North America before crossing to Greenland and Iceland, then travelled south through Europe and Africa, ending in Cape Town eight months and 43 000km later – including an unbroken 840km stretch over water, a highest altitude of 12 000 feet above sea level and a fastest ground speed of 203km/h.
Blyth and Aubert timed their "Millennium Microlight Adventure" to celebrate the new millennium. De Agrela and Honeyborne are timing their "Freedom Flight" to mark 100 years since the Wright brothers first took to the air in 1904 – and 10 years since South Africa's first democratic elections in 1994.
For De Agrela and Honeyborne, the birth of the new South Africa was "an example of transformation and cooperation that captured the world's imagination" – and it is the world's imagination that they aim to capture again, using stopovers in 50 countries to "draw attention to all that South Africans have
achieved and all this country has to offer".
For this, they have drawn their inspiration from the Brand South Africa campaign of the International Marketing Council, a private-public partnership set up at the initiative of President Thabo Mbeki and charged with creating a positive, united image for South Africa – an image best captured in the campaign slogan: "Alive with Possibility".
"Microlights let us take a step back to the age of adventure when time ran slower, people talked face to face and anything was possible", Honeyborne wrote on his website earlier this year. "We're taking flying back to the people, stopping to smell the flowers and hopefully inspiring people, especially young people, to reach for the skies."
De Agrela and Honeyborne are certainly alive to their own
possibilities. Cape Town resident De Agrela, 42, first took to the skies 20 years ago on a hang glider, and represented Western Province in every national hang gliding championship between 1983 and 2000. Since getting his microlight licence five years ago, he's clocked up over 40 000km and 700 hours of adventure flying in microlights – always with the goal of flying a microlight around the world.
Port Elizabeth resident Honeyborne, 34, also took up microlight flying in 1998, won the national championships in 2000 and, along with De Agrela, a USA Ultralight Association Award for achievement in microlighting in 2001. He's logged over 700 hours in microlight "trikes", mainly on long expedition flights – and has been planning a round-the-world flight for over two years.
The duo are flying weight-shift type microlights, commonly known as "trikes" and chosen because of their unique flying characteristics, which allow them to take off and land in little more than 100 metres and
still cover great distances in relative safety.
"They are notoriously robust and lend themselves to long unsupported expeditions such as this", De Agrela said, adding that the trikes were manufactured in Durban and assembled by the pilots themselves. The trikes for this journey were specially prepared with such modifications as extreme long-range fuel tanks, quieter and more efficient 4-stroke engines, and all-terrain landing gear.
"In the world of light aircraft they say, 'If you've got time to spare, go by air.'", Honeyborne remarked. "Well, if you choose to fly anything smaller, better make that, 'If you don't absolutely have to get there, go by microlight'.
"Not that that's a bad thing, mind you. It just means that your plans must be totally flexible and cater for every eventuality. The trick is learning to do this when packing space is virtually non-existent and anything that can't be tied down will turn almost instantly into prop-fodder."
To most
people, says Honeyborne, flying a microlight aircraft is an end in itself - "the thrill of taking off in the simplest of flying machines and soaring over the landscape free as a bird with the wind in their face is all they are after. For others, this is merely the beginning - to them the microlight is the means to a far greater adventure."
SouthAfrica.info reporter
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