Flying an iconic Australian aircraft in the form of a GA8-TC 320 Airvan, Victorian pilots Ken Evers and Tim Pryse completed an epic, history-making circumnavigation when they touched down at Bendigo Airport on July 8. Justin Grey reports.
The pair departed Bendigo on May 8 intent on circumnavigating the globe to raise funds for, and awareness of, the fight against Malaria as part of Evers’ ‘Millions Against Malaria’ charity project.
The pair also used the flight to celebrate the recent Centenary of Australian aviation, and by flying the Gippsland Aeronautics’ Airvan they set a world-first by completing a round the world flight in an Australian designed and manufactured single engine aircraft.
Tracing a route through the areas of the world most devastated by malaria, which meant they conducted most of their flying in close proximity to the equator, Evers and Pryse visited 16 countries over 61 days and between them logged 284 flight hours and flew just under 28,000 nautical miles.
From a pilot’s perspective, Evers says the highlights of the flight were crossing the Pacific and Atlantic oceans, legs of the trip that thankfully came and went without too many problems.
However, Evers and Pryse battled horrific weather for much of the flight, with only three or four of the total 28 legs going completely according to plan. Originally planning to cross the Atlantic from Brazil to Ghana, severe storms forced them to enter the African continent via Namibia with a refuelling stop at Ascension Island. They then attempted to make the crossing to Namibia but were thwarted by strong headwinds and were forced to return to Ascension.
They also encountered severe storms coming out of Jamaica and again in Cameroon, while also enduring more than their fair share of bureaucratic frustrations at numerous points along they way.
“It was frustrating flying in Africa because your flight plan information is not passed on, so every single time you get to the next FIR boundary you get hammered with all the flight planning questions,” Evers explains.
“And then they don’t believe you that you’ve got a 23-hour endurance on the aircraft. Once they asked us five times, and basically told us we were lying, because no aircraft had a 23-hour endurance.”
Completing a round the world flight requires incredible stamina and physical and mental resolve. The pair flew a number of mind-bogglingly long flight legs, with the longest a whopping 20 hours and 40 minutes while over Africa. Evers says nothing could’ve prepared him for how physically and mentally draining it ended up being, right up to the last three days, during which they flew 39 hours.
“Mentally and also physically you get very exhausted,” he explains. “Probably the hardest part of the flight was flying at night over the ocean. We very rarely had moon and stars, in fact we only had the moon on one of our night legs for the entire flight. And when you’re flying IFR and you have not seen any form of visible horizon for 10 hours, man that can take it out of you.
“We did stop and just take a couple of days off because you get to the point where you’re just really ragged. You have to be very honest with yourself and your co-pilot that if you’re feeling knackered or sleepy don’t feel bashful about saying, ‘Look, can you take the controls for half an hour’. And don’t feel bad about putting it off ‘til tomorrow.”
A major point of pride of the flight for Evers was making history by flying an Australian designed and manufactured single engine aircraft around the world. For the flight the pair were gifted with a very low-hour (a mere 30hrs on the clock, to be exact) GA8-TC 320 Airvan (VH-BYI) from Gippsland Aeronautics’ Founding Directors George Morgan and Peter Furlong, and Evers instantly fell in love with the aircraft.
While VH-BYI underwent scheduled maintenance in the US and then in Tanzania, Evers says the Airvan performed flawlessly throughout the circumnavigation. This included lugging a colossal 1332 Litres of fuel when full and operating in and out of some formidable, “tiny little bush strips” in locales as hostile as the highlands of PNG.
“Australia should be absolutely beyond proud of that aircraft,” Evers beams. “We didn’t have an iota of problems with it, not one. One of the things that impressed me about the aircraft was that the longer we flew it the more we began to appreciate the little intricacies that have been built into it to make it a real pilot’s aircraft.
"And to fly that entire flight and not have any problems is just unreal. It’s just an incredible machine.”
As for the important malaria fundraising side of the project, Evers admits there’s still a lot of work to be done.
“I took off with what I thought was an understanding of how bad malaria was, but then to go and see if first-hand and talk with people who’ve lost up to five children because of malaria, I’ve come back to Australia with an extremely different view on life,” Evers explains.
“And in a sense, while the flight is completed, I really feel like the work has just begun.
“Already we’re doing work now to get malaria equipment into a couple of villages, and we’ve been really encouraged with the response we’ve got.”
Donations can still be made via the Millions Against Malaria website, DVD and a book on the flight are scheduled for release before year’s end. Revenue from both will go towards fighting malaria.
For any adventurous pilots planning their own circumnavigation, Evers advises to thoroughly research all aspects of your planned flight before departing on your first leg.
“I just found that nothing beats the local knowledge of pilots,” he says. “We found that once we got to the different countries and started talking to the pilots they’d go, ‘Well, actually you should do this, or that, or the other’. And that was tremendously helpful.
"Fuel is a huge thing, especially flying an aircraft with Avgas. Don’t stop calling about Avgas for the entire flight, because they might tell you yesterday that they had Avgas, but tomorrow they haven’t.
“And the last bit of advice I’d give? Fly an Airvan!”