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BELL 430: IN 17 DAYS AROUND THE WORLD

Ron Bowers and John Williams have written "another small chapter in the history of aviation": The two Texan pilots set a new world record for a flight around the world with a helicopter. They made it back to England in time for the Farnborough Air Show in spite of weather problems and difficulties with Russian air traffic control. It had taken them exactly 17 days, six hours, 14 minutes, and 25 seconds to cover the 32800 kilometer trip, starting out at the nearby Fairoaks airport, via Iceland, Greenland, Canada, the USA, Alaska, Siberia, Scandinavia, Germany, Belgium, and back over the Channel to Great Britain. Although the experienced crew (together 15000 flight hours) could sleep in bed every night, the flight and the necessary management took up to 17 hours per day. Due to this fact, possible signs of fatigue were evaluated within the scope of a NASA study. The Bell 430 was fitted with an additional fuel tank, allowing flight times of over four hours at a cruise speed of 140 kts. Several GPS receivers and a moving-map display from Becker Flugfunk made precise navigation possible.

From page 19 of FLUG REVUE 10/96