ROUND BRITAIN RECORD ATTEMPT 

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NEWS

10th July 2012

We are hoping to fly the aircraft down to Kemble to formally hand over the donations on Monday 16th July. Fly2Help are having an Air Smiles day. Let's hope that we get a little bit of summer at long last. I'm hoping to get a few photographs that we can email out to all our kind sponsors.

18th June 2012

Great news this morning. The Records Coordinator of the Royal Aero Racing club made contact this morning to confirm that the committee has met and ratified our record claim

5th June 2012

SUCCESS!

The aircraft took off from Derby Airfield at 5.09am yesterday and crossed the start line at Hawarden airfield near Chester at 5.35am. The start was witnessed by Air Traffic Controllers at Liverpool Airport who then cleared the aircraft to start a clockwise circumnavigation around the coast. The first leg of the journey was a gruelling flight following the coast north past the Lake District and West Coast of Scotland to Wick, where the aircraft was swiftly refuelled. The long second leg from Wick around the east and south coasts led the aircraft to its second stop at Lee-on-Solent, near Southampton. A final dash down to Cornwall, then around the West Country to Cardiff finally sweeping up the coast of Wales brought the team back to Hawarden, where Liverpool Air Traffic Controllers were waiting to record a finish time at 7.07pm. The flight covered a distance of 3,579 km - the equivalent of flying from Derby across the Atlantic to St John’s in Canada.

 

The flight was not without its challenges. Despite the poor weather over recent days Jonathan and David, spotted a short weather window so the attempt could be made during the Jubilee Weekend. Support from Air Traffic Control was also essential. At Aberdeen for example, the controllers did a superb job of carefully threading the tiny Cessna through a myriad of oil-rig helicopters and commercial traffic, allowing the aircraft to maintain its top speed through Scotland.

As the previous record was held by a faster aircraft, good planning and slick support was crucial. At Wick, the fuel tankers of Far North Aviation were moving into position even as the aircraft approached to land and at Lee, Derby Aero club members were waiting to ensure a rapid turnaround, cleaning windscreens and topping up the oil. Staggeringly, each pit-stop on the ground was achieved in less than seven minutes

The time of 13 hours 32 minutes knocked an amazing 50 minutes off the best time recorded so far in all classes of propeller driven aircraft.

THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR YOUR HELP AND KIND DONATIONS

Please tell others as we would love to raise more money for Fly2Help.

 

30th May 2012

We are now ready to go. There is enough daylight to allow us to get around before it gets dark. We've also had final authorisation from the Record Authorities. Now we wait for that perfect weather window. Long range weather forecasts suggests the first two weeks in June will be the best time.

17th May 2012

The fuel calibration of the flight computer was completed yesterday after a flight across the west country, across to London and back to Derby and a long Scottish run. Light aircraft have inaccurate fuel gauges (incredible but true), so we need to be sure we don't run out of fuel.

David has been able to work on engine tuning parameters on the long run yesterday and we now have a high speed cruise configuration we are happy with. The bad news is that the speed the aircraft can maintain is about 2 knots slower than we had hoped. However, the good news is that G-BOPH is burning about 6 litres of fuel an hour less than we expected. This gives us more range (and makes it almost certain that we can make the long second leg without an unscheduled fuel stop) and it also means that we can push the aircraft harder in the last short leg. Overall, we are still confident that we can beat the previous best time.

11th May 2012

The waypoints for the circumnavigation have been agreed with the record authorities. Fuel system calibration is nearly complete. The engine is starting to burn some oil, but is still going well. 

22nd April 2012

The aircraft is still running well. The engine is stable, having burned only one litre of oil in eleven hours. This bodes well for the high speed legs. Fuel calibration will be completed in about a week.

1st April 2012

Further test flights to South West Wales, East Anglia and Northern England have also gone well. The Royal Aero Racing Club and the FAI (world governing authority) have sent both pilots licenses so we are authorised to make the attempt. We need to agree the exact course with them in the coming weeks.

15th March 2012

A test flight to Scotland via the East Coast and across to Cumbria went well. G-BOPH achieved 140 knots in the cruise with good engine indications. It looks like we might be able to squeeze another 8 knots on top of this for the attempt.

8th March 2012

The aircraft is performing well. Test flights to Breighton (Yorkshire) and Peterborough show the engine is running beautifully. The ADF navigation aerials also look to be fixed. They picked up the East Midlands EME and EMW radio beacons perfectly last week.

1st March 2012

G-BOPH has completed her checks. It looks like David has cured some minor oil leaks and the problem with cylinder 3 in the engine was as simple as a dicky spark plug. We restart the training at the weekend with a flight to the Solway Firth, weather permitting. Donations for Fly2Help are still coming in. We are just about to pass the £1000 mark. Thank you!!

18th February 2012

A disappointing month so far. With snow closing the airfield for over a week and some pretty grotty weather since then, flying has been sparse. G-BOPH has her 50 hour check coming up. We are going to made some mods to the engine health monitoring (EHM) display and check out the ADF navigation aerials. Also, we need to make sure the engine is pristine. The EHM suggests that we might have some glaing on cylinder 3 (of the 6) which might need to be looked at before we make the record attempt.

1st February 2012

You can now follow us on Twitter - @roundbritrecord Sponsors please stand by. The first Newsletter is out.

26th January 2012

Jonathan has just successfully completed the IMC instrument rating, mixing it with RyanAir and BMI heavies on multiple instrument approaches into East Midlands. This rating will allow us to fly in or above cloud, opening up a wider weather window for the record attempt. The aircraft (G-BOPH) continues to perform well in training, although she might need some work on one engine cylinder at her 50 hour check in February. All is still on track!

17th January 2012

We've been investigating the option of carrying additional fuel tanks to try and eliminate fuel stops. Ferry tanks will require regulatory approval as a 'mod' and additional wing tanks do not give us enough range to avoid refuelling, so we've decided go for two stops and a 160 kt sprint to the finish with the last half tank of fuel. Early flight planning is now underway. At the moment, a clockwise circumnavigation seems to give the best times due to prevailing winds. We also need to get our fuel flow accurately calibrated in January. This isn't as easy as it sounds! 

4th January 2012 - Update

All of our sponsor's names (assuming they are happy with this!) will be carried on board the aircraft during the record attempt. We are investigating whether we can safely carry sponsor names externally on the hull without upsetting the Civil Aviation Authority. After the attempt, all the sponsors will also receive a copy of the record certificate and a thank-you letter. Meanwhile, G-BOPH has been upgraded with a Mode-S transponder and an sophisticated EDM830 engine health monitoring system (which wasn't pinched from Rolls-Royce!) - see picture below.

24th December 2011 - David Jones named as second captain

We are delighted to announce that David Jones (see picture gallery) has agreed to take the second pilot slot. Two pilots are required for a journey of this length and as Chief Engineer of Airspeed Aviation at Derby Aerodrome, David has a wealth of experience to offer. 

22nd December 2011- Update

We started discussions today with Royal Aero Race club's world record coordinator on the proposed routing and verification criteria. We expect to get all the details confirmed in January.

21st December 2011 - Launch of the campaign

The challenge we've set ourselves is to set a new world record for the Round Britain circumnavigation record in a light aircraft. We'll be using a Cessna 182, call-sign golf-papa-hotel. The course will be a minimum of 3,500 km either clockwise or anti-clockwise around the coast of the mainland UK. The flight will be monitored by the Royal Aero Racing Club as representatives of the FAI, the world record awarding body. We hope to complete the challenge in about 14-15 hours. To do this, we'll need good weather and daylight throughout the flight, so we will attempt the record between Mid May and Mid July 2012 once the days are long enough.

We have a great chance of setting the record in the weight category of the Cessna, but we are also going to have a crack at beating the overall piston engine record (which just under 15 hours). This was set by a racing aircraft in August 2011. While the current record-holding aircraft is faster than papa-hotel, we think we can give them a run for their money through careful flight management and more efficient refuelling stops (we hope to get by with 2 pitstops).

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