Battles Heavy Weather On Flight From Philippines
By ANN Contributor Daniel Ford
Welsh veterinarian Maurice Kirk, who is hoping to fly his 1943
Piper L-4 "Liberty Girl" around the world, landed safely on Taiwan
Wednesday after battling thunderstorms on his flight from the
Philippines.
Maurice was a camp follower during the London-Sydney air race in
April 2001, covering nearly 14,000 miles and managing to keep up
with the official competitors by flying seven days a week instead
of the scheduled six. He was in the air 200 hours over the course
of 28 days.
That left "Liberty Girl" on the far side of the globe while
Maurice pondered ways of bringing her back to Wales. Last year he
took part in a race around New Zealand, and in November he decided
that the thing for him to do was press on to the eastward, for the
United States by way of Russia and Alaska. To do that, however, he
first had to fly west for a time.
After battling New Zealand authorities for the right to take off
in a grossly overloaded airplane, he made the jump to remote
Norfolk Island. From there, on November 8, it was an even longer
jump to Australia: 788 nautical miles. He was 11 hours and 30
minutes in the air, in a plane that left the Piper factory with a
12-gallon tank. (Liberty Girl has since been refitted with wing
tanks, an overhead tank in the cockpit, and a quantity of 20-liter
jerry jugs from which Maurice can transfer fuel in flight.)
He began his northward trek on April 25, from Darwin 400 miles
to the Indonesia island of East Timor. Two days later he flew
another staggering over-water leg: 700 miles and 11 hours to
Borneo. Foiled in his attempt to get clearances through Vietnam and
China, he flew to the Philippines on May 7.
Wherever he goes next, Maurice faces a problem in Russia. It
seems that light aircraft must be diesel-powered, and nobody yet
has come up with a way to put a diesel engine in an airplane with
an official gross weight of under 1200 pounds.
Maurice bought a white shirt with epaulets to smooth his way
past Southeast Asian officialdom. He wears an immersion suit for
over-water flights, however. Here he is indicating the amount of
fuel remaining after his 11-hour flight to Borneo.
A novelist and journalist based in New Hampshire, Dan Ford flies
a 1946 Piper Cub rebuilt as an L-4, but has never flown it across a
body of salt water.