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Around the World in 90 Days
CINDI BROWNFIELDNEWS-JOURNAL EDUCATION WRITER
DAYTONA BEACH — The spin of a globe gave Ben Riecken an idea of global proportions.
“I was bored in my dorm room and I just wanted to do something,” said Riecken, who was in his first year at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University at the time.
“I have a globe and I swung it around and thought, ‘Why not fly around the world?’ I didn´t even have a pilot´s license at the time,” he said.
Two years and 250 flight-hours later, Riecken is planning a July 8, 2003, takeoff for his round-the-world adventure in a light airplane.
The 21-year-old senior from Brussels, Belgium, and an Embry-Riddle professor are planning the 28,000-mile trip. They plan to mark the centennial of the Wright brothers´ historic flight on the sands of Kitty Hawk, N.C., to honor the vic tims of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, and to raise awareness of the importance of general aviation to the modern world.
If all goes as planned, Riecken and Charlie Bass, who teaches human factors psychology and works as an instructor pilot at Embry-Riddle, will take off from Daytona Beach next July in a borrowed or donated Cessna 182 modified to carry extra fuel storage tanks. They´re still tracking down the plane, but the plans already are soaring.
The flight is expected to take 90 days, starting from North America to Europe to North Africa to the Middle East to south Asia to Australia to the Pacific Islands and back to North America. Stops are planned in more than two dozen countries.
Riecken would fly solo on the last leg of the trip -- a 16-hour flight from Hawaii to California -- because extra fuel containers will take up virtually all the space inside the plane.
To get the flight off the ground, though, they need both luck and money. Military action in Iraq could cancel the trip or force it to be limited to the United States. The trip will cost an estimated $75,000, and Riecken has raised $22,000 so far. He is looking for other sponsors now.
A retired Swiss airline captain who has flown around the world twice is providing financial and logistical support, Riecken said. And a company in Switzerland, Aero Explorer International, is providing flight planning services. Riecken and Bass are arranging visas and will have to file flight plans with countries around the world.
Embry-Riddle isn´t able to loan the team an airplane because it leases its planes. The university doesn´t sponsor individual trips, but officials support his dream.
“If he can solve some of these technical issues, he stands a very good chance of succeeding,” said Richard Theokas, ERAU flight director. “The kid is gutsy. He´s smart and he´s very determined.”
Even though his parents think he´s “crazy,” Riecken said he is determined not to let the obstacles stop him. “This is something I really want to do. I´m stubborn. When I say I´m going to do it, I´m going to do it.”
The Sept. 11 terrorist attacks really gave the mission momentum, he said. The victims´ names will be listed on the plane´s wings.
The reputation of the general aviation industry, which includes all aircraft that aren´t military or commercial, suffered after Sept. 11th because the terrorists trained in small civilian planes, he said.
“General aviation is the backbone of aviation,” said Riecken, who wants to be a commercial airline pilot. “What we want to do is sort of reclaim our sky.”
The Wright Stuff
Orville and Wilbur Wright invented the first successful power-driven airplane nearly 100 years ago.The historic first flight was at 10:35 a.m. on Dec. 17, 1903, on a remote sandy area at Kitty Hawk, N.C. With Orville at the controls, the plane flew 120 feet and was in the air 12 seconds. The brothers made three more flights that day. Wilbur was the pilot for the longest -- 852 feet in 59 seconds.
The Wright Flyer cost less than $1,000 to build. It had wings 40.5 feet long and weighed about 750 pounds, with the pilot. The brothers, who manufactured bicycles for a living, designed and built their own gas engine for the plane.
Serial Story: UP IN THE AIR -- The 18-part serial story ran in the Daytona Beach News-Journal each Monday from January 13 through May 19 (except for April 14). Text and illustrations for the serial copyright © 2003 by Brian Floca. Sponsored in part by Inventing Flight, Dayton, Ohio. Reprinted by permission of Breakfast Serials, Inc. www.breakfastserials.com.
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