Wed, Sep 09, 2015
The Airplane Factory Making Progress In Its Latest Around-The-World Effort
The Airplane Factor has posted on Facebook that the Sling 2 flown by Jean D'Assonville and Patrick Huang has arrived safely in Taipei, Taiwan.
The pair departed Guam at 15:45 Zulu on September 6th, and arrived in Taipei following a 16-hour flight over the Pacific ocean.
On the journey's blog posted by The Airplane Factory, Jean wrote "Headwind was a little kinder on this leg, and weather up there was also less developed than the leg to Guam. I did a lot of reading, and Patrick remained very focused on the flying and used our comfortable fuel reserves to optimize our speed into the headwinds.
"We were talking to Tokyo Radio on the HF as we approached Taiwan. We were making our way through some rather gloomy weather as we were about 200 miles out. Visibility was poor and we flew through some thick cloud and rain more often. At 150 miles out Tokyo handed us over to Taipei who we failed to raise on VHF until about 80 miles out. They vectored us in on a IF aproach. This worked wonderfully because of the very limited visibility and the known high terrain on our approach in. We were eventually set up on finals, and as we came out of cloud, there the runway was and the impressive city scape below. Another perfect landing by Patrick marked a point in the history of General aviation in Taiwan.
"We were welcomed by the ATC and cautiously slipped the Taiwanese flag out the canopy opening - not sure how this would be accepted in the very conservative environment. The ground controller and media thanked us for 'the flag', so we immediately raised further and enjoyed the ride into the welcoming ground crew in our parking."
The pair plans to attend an airshow in China before pushing on to The Airplane Factory in South Africa to complete their circumnavigation.
(Image provided by The Airplane Factory)
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