World Record Flight -Southern Brazil To Oshkosh

WORLD RECORD FLIGHT – BRAZIL TO OSHKOSH

“Porto Alegre tower, Papa Tango Papa Oscar Tango with a flight of three, ready for takeoff on runway one one. We are VFR to Navigantes and this is a declared world record flight from Porto Alegre to Oshkosh in the USA. We need a takeoff time confirmation, please.”

“Papa Tango Papa Oscar Tango is cleared for takeoff. Formation takeoff not approved. Maintain normal spacing between aircraft while in the airport area. Good luck on your flight and best wishes.”

“Roger and thank you. Papa Oscar Tango rolling.”

“Papa Oscar Uniform is cleared for takeoff.” “Papa Oscar Uniform.””

:Papa Oscar Sierra is cleared for takeoff.” “Papa Oscar Sierra.”

Pushing up the power to begin the takeoff roll brought an immense relief. The several months of planning and preparation for this flight was finally over and the only thing left now was to execute.

Almost a year earlier, three of us had inspected the Brazilian motorglider known as the Ximango (falcon in Portuguese) at Oshkosh in 1994 and decided to try to get involved in its introduction to the USA. Our marketing expertise and ability to prepare slick proposals rapidly outran our common sense and soon the three of us formed a corporation and became the North American Distributor for Grupo Aeromot, an old-line Brazilian aviation company that was the motorglider's manufacturer. We ordered our first four aircraft and the decision was made to fly them from Brazil to our home base in Florida, rather than ship them by sea container. It appeared to be cheaper, faster and definitely more interesting! Because of the timing, it was an easy step to extend the ferry flight to Oshkosh to coincide with the opening of Airventure 1995, and to file with the FAI for point-to-point records for the trip, both actions calculated to highlight the introduction of this new sport aircraft to the American flying public.

The planning for the flight itself was not quite as smooth, however. Although both my partners had flown in South America, there were no good maps in 1995 for much of the route. Weather reporting along the route was poor-to-nonexistent. And airport data, fuel availability and information on repair facilities was reliable only at large airports. However, this was the age of the GPS and we were at least fairly sure of not getting lost by using handheld Garmins in each plane. The factory assured us of support at the larger airports in Brazil (it was a definite advantage that the brother of the Aeromot President was in charge of a number of them) and, feeling more intrepid than well-organized, we launched.

Porto Alegre is a large industrial city of 1.5 million people at the southernmost end of Brazil, across the estuary from Uruguay. When we arrived at Salgado Filho International by commercial airline, we were driven across the airport to the Aeromot hangars where our brand new aircraft sat in the winter sun. Test hops produced very few, and minor, squawks which were quickly fixed. But departure was not yet possible – there was a big dinner attended by the Porto Alegre mayor, the senior military commander in the area, and the press, most notably a luscious-looking Brazilian TV anchor that hung attentively on every heroic word that I uttered about the dangers of flying over the jungle... or at least it seemed that way to me.

We finally departed late the next morning, after a short local hop for the press with a two-ship formation – cameraman in one, reporter in the other for the “videos at five” evening news. We overflew the local aero club and home of the Porto Alegre EAA chapter, then climbed to cruise altitude for our first leg over rugged mountain forests and high plains, including a huge, misty waterfall that belonged on a postcard. We decided in the air to make our first RON stop on the southern Brazilian coast at Santos AFB, which we would reach near dusk and where we were certain to have good airport facilities. The OD there was gracious and, interestingly, was taking leave to go to Oshkosh, so we made plans to meet there later that month. The following morning, the weather was poor, so the BAF maintenance crews helped us de-cowl and check over all three aircraft, air the tires and generally look after our craft. Santos AFB is a sleepy training base and the cadre seemed glad to see us, if for no other reason than we broke the monotony. And the tower was completely tolerant of our formation takeoff, which in this low-powered aircraft, enabled join-ups to occur promptly and without undue strain. Unfortunately, it was to be an experience unique to all our operations in Brazil.

Up the coast to Rio de Janiero we flew in glorious weather. As we switched frequencies from Rio Approach to the tower, one of my personal great moments in aviation occurred. There we were, a three-ship in a tight vic in the bright Sunday sunshine, passing Sugar Loaf on our left, bright blue water on our right, then banking to round the turn to the west over the bay to enter the pattern at Santos Dumont Airport, named after the Brazilian aviator, explorer and poet. I would give a lot for a painting, or even a good photo, of that moment. My glow was short-lived. Santos Dumont is one of those sinister creations of the aviation gods that has a runway 13 - 31. Actually, Santos Dumont has two of them, parallel! There I was, communicating with the tower, who spoke passable but heavily-accented English, with my primary need being to determine whether he wanted my formation to land on one-three... or three-one, left or right. Tower, on the other hand, had the primary goal of letting me know that formation flying in his airspace by civilian aircraft was a really bad idea and wanted to get us separated as efficiently as possible. By the time we had sorted it out, we were on downwind to one-three left, so we broke to base one at a time, and turned final in trail with enough separation to avoid further discussion, and landed.

The next day we flew out of Rio north again and decided to take an inland course over beautiful volcanic uplifts jutting from green plains. However, we were soon trapped by lowering ceilings and were on the deck weaving among the uplifts instead of flying safely above them. On the plus side, I saw, and flew through, a circular rainbow, an optical feat I believed impossible. On the minus side, the ceiling kept getting lower as did our fuel state, so we found ,and unceremoniously followed, a river at low level under the scud, in trail formation, to the coast , where we turned north and landed at a nearby packed dirt strip. Flying for the day was over. Fortunately, all was not lost - the town was having a fiesta, an event rural Brazilians seem to need very little incentive to stage. Good food and music, followed by fireworks, ended a hard day of flying.

The next important stops were at major airports at the Brazilian cities of Recife, Fortaleza, Sao Luis and Belem, the last being where we cleared Brazilian customs outbound. We had turned west for these legs and our groundspeeds were much more satisfying. A 20-knot tailwind is an important and spiritually-uplifting addition in a 120-knot aircraft! We departed Belem to begin the transit of the Amazon delta. This is not an ordinary river mouth, of course. The Amazon is several hundred miles wide near the coast, having bifurcated into two major streams each tens of miles across and containing countless smaller rivulets, all separated by a combination of jungle and clearings. To make things more interesting, the weather consisted of big, soft rainstorms with 400-foot ceilings and patches of hard rain. We wormed our way across the Amazon delta at 250 feet between the showers, making numerous heading changes but all the while moving NNW in remarkably smooth air. The low-level flight permitted an up-close inspection of what was under us on the ground and we discovered an amazing number of tiny villages and individual huts populating the cleared spots in the Amazon delta. Goats were everywhere and, on several occasions, people standing outside a hut looked up and waved at the three white long-winged planes cruising by just overhead. We joked to each other on the radio that we were probably being deified by the natives then and there. Oh, well. Better than having engine failure at that moment and risking being eaten!

On into French Guiana we flew, to RON at Cayenne on the coast. Space buffs will recognize French Guiana as the site of the European space launch facility and, indeed, a cargo aircraft carrying a Russian satellite arrived at the airport shortly after we did. The radar and WX facilities at Cayenne were the best of the entire trip, unsurprisingly, and we made good use of them because the weather was usually lousy there in the so-called Intertropical Convergence Zone. Since we were rained in, we took a cab to a terrific French restaurant run by a Spanish family where, after days of being unable to communicate in Portuguese-speaking Brazil, I was able to talk to the owners. And, since we were rained in, we celebrated with several adult beverages, which, in the interests of the mission, had been foresworn thus far since leaving Porto Alegre.

Our next RON was, against all advice, at Georgetown in Guiana where we had one of the most interesting experiences of the trip. Georgetown has a well-deserved reputation for crime and while we waited for the airport fuel truck we discussed the risks of leaving our aircraft at the airport overnight while we went into town 30 minutes away to a hotel. After a long wait, the fuel truck showed up but the pump wouldn't work. My partner, Keith Phillips, never met a mechanism he couldn't fix and, sure enough, soon had the pump working to fill our tanks. We had attracted a crowd of locals, mostly women and children, numbering at least 50, who had come out to see our planes. In the middle of all the commotion of the fuel truck and the crowd, “George” the airport fire chief showed up to see what was going on. Now, George was what anybody would call a striking individual. He was black as night, of course, and stood around 6'5” without his red fire-chief's hat on his head and he weighed at least 300 lbs. George was also no mere bureaucrat but was a first-class entrepreneur as well. Once he learned of our concerns about our aircraft and hotels, he did two things: 1) detailed three of his firemen to sleep under our planes all night as guards (for a fee) and 2) invited us to spend the night in his guestrooms at the airport firehouse nearby (for another fee.) To add to our amazement, later that evening over beers from his firehouse fridge, George turned out to be extremely well-informed, and opinionated, on world events, thanks to the satellite TV in the firehouse. He held forth with a lively after-dinner discussion about the situation and history of the two Koreas before we turned in. All in all, we thought we had gotten good treatment and had an enjoyable stay, including safe aircraft, for around $100 for the three of us.

The following days were spent crossing the Caribbean, entering the land of radar coverage and speaking to controllers with good English, and enjoying great weather. The tower at Grenada, upon our entry into the break from a downwind, piped up with, “lookin' good, mon” in his crisp Caribbean accent. The tower at St. Thomas had a surprise for us with “cleared to land, and St. Thomas tower and Bob Spinks welcome you to our fine island.” Turned out that our neighbors, Bob and Vivian Spinks, were at their St. Thomas home when they heard from the grapevine we were inbound, and hurried down to the airport to help the controller say hello.

We next flew west through the north edge of the San Juan Class B then turned north at the Dominican Republic to cross the longest stretch of open water for the trip, 130 nm, to Grand Turk. We had calculated that our 31:1 motorgliders could glide to land from the midpoint of this leg if we had an engine failure at any altitude over 12,000 feet. But by this far into the journey, we were completely comfortable with our smooth-running engines, which had operated flawlessly for the entire trip. On to a RON at Grand Turk, then into Stella Maris for a quick turn and a launch for Ft. Pierce, Florida where we had decided to clear US customs in the belief that, since FPR was a smaller airport than Miami or West Palm, things would go faster. Wrong. While having the aircraft carry Brazilian tail numbers had saved us much grief and treasure in Brazil, all it did here in the USA was create confusion. After threats of impoundment, many phone calls and discussions, U.S.Customs basically gave up and, with a warning not to come back without US registration, allowed us to make an informal entry with the aircraft. After skirting a serious Florida thunderstorm on the way north from FPR, we overflew our home airport in Daytona Beach, to be clocked in by the designated FIA observer, and landed to the cheers of a hundred or so adoring neighbors, wives and children. In a few days, we would depart, now with the fourth plane added in a beautiful diamond formation, for Oshkosh Airventure 95. We flew the FISK VFR approach, in trail, followed by landing at OSH on runway 36 and being clocked in by the FAI official in the tower. We parked the aircraft in a special area designated for us and began to bask in the glory of it all, proudly describing our heroic adventure to the admiring, how dangerous it was to fly over the Brazilian jungle, pointing out that the Wright brothers actually started it all in 1903 because the Wright Flyer was really a motorglider....

We had logged 72 hours of flight, landed at 22 airports in five countries and flown 6500 nautical miles, setting FAI point-to-point records for our weight class between POA and OSH, POA and DAB, and DAB and OSH. The records all still stand at the end of 2015.