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After surviving a 120 day adventure, a British pilot has completed his record breaking journey around the world to become the first to circumnavigate the globe by microlight aircraft, essentially a hang-glider with a motorcycle slung underneath.
Although he failed to complete the odyssey in time to match Phileas Fogg's fictional trip around the world in 80 days, he also smashed the previous record for a round-the-world flight in an open-cockpit single engine aircraft. That was set in 1924 by four US Army pilots who completed the trip in 175 days in a Douglas biplane.
Milton, a 55 year old former journalist for the BBC, set off from England on 24 March with co-pilot Keith Reynolds, who was forced to drop out in Russia after authorities insisted the pair either take on a native navigator or pay for a plane to accompany them. But even though he survived Alaskan blizzards, being buzzed by a Syrian MiG jet and an engine blowing up, Milton said his final landing was among the worst of the whole trip. "I had about 14 really hairy landings and that was one of the top five", he said. "It could have ruined the story having got it all the way round the world". Milton was in the last of a flotilla of eight microlights to touch down in high winds after the five hour final leg of his journey from Derbyshire in northern England. The trip, inspired by the 125th anniversary of the Jules Verne novel, was plagued by numerous delays and difficulties caused by the weather and bureaucratic wrangling. As he sipped champagne from a bottle, Milton said he would never make the journey again, but his next challenge might be a round-the-world race in a fixed wing microlight. He said he plans to write a book about the adventure and hopes to make a television documentary with some of the 200 hours of video footage he recorded. The GT Global Flyer, a single engine Pegasus Quantum 912 aircraft, was powered by an engine equivalent to small car's. It had a wingspan of 33 feet, 8 inches and an open cockpit that was 9 feet, 2 inches long. The trip included stops in France, Germany, Italy, Greece, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Oman, Pakistan, India, Bangladesh, Laos, Vietnam, China, South Korea and Japan. From there, he flew to Russia, the United States, Canada, Greenland, Denmark, Iceland and Scotland before he returned to England. The trip broke the record for the longest and fastest microlight flight, which Milton set in 1987 when he flew solo from London to Sydney in 59 days. |
| OTHER ARTICLES OF ASI AUGUST'98 ISSUE | News In Brief | Letters To The Editor | World Records | | Overture For Airplane & Orchestra | | British Pilot Breaks Aviation Record | | 2nd World Conference On Women And Sport | | 10th International European Club Class Gliding Championship 1998 | | Portrait Of A Woman |  More articles on Microlight
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