Not sure. I know he is in contact with his wife, Sue, by satellite phone. She is a retired United Airlines 777 captain. She provides him with information from home base, Fredericksburg, Va.

I think all us sissies on Beechtalk (speaking of no one but me), could learn a lot from this guy - we need more pilots that can match the capabilities of the planes they fly!

This next leg must be the highest risk leg- extremes of wind and temperatures, limited alternates, limited SAR, limited air traffic for comm relays, etc. The entire endeavor I think is on a par with Voyager, and I wonder what kind of team he has, staying in contact with him and updating him on weather and operational considerations. This is worthy of a book and I hope he comes through for the rest of us who can only fantasize about such a trip.

His adventures are really fascinating. But how can this technically be called a circumpolar, when he's not going over the poles or the antarctic continent? The next leg, Punta Arenas to Christchurch, is all ocean. If a person flew south and across the polar continent then north, they'd be headed for Perth, Australia.

As far as I can tell, this next leg is 4170nm, a little over 23 hours assuming 180kts.

I think if you fly south to the pole, then pretty much everything is north of there...

I think if you fly south to the pole, then pretty much everything is north of there...

Perth has lots of kiwi's ...maybe he got them mixed up?

I would gamble a milkshake that Capt Harrelson has this homebuilt rigged up so that he can
lay down and log some zzz's. Plus an alarm to awaken for altitude change, A/P disconnect,
JPI excursions, eta for next waypoint and position report, etc.

He couldn't do this sort of flight without sleep. I've done 17 hours, when I was younger, was totally shot to hell by the time I landed. A psychologist, Janet Lapp I believe, wrote in ABS that a human awake for more than ?14 hours is more impaired than a drunk driver, and I certainly believe that. Awake for 36 hours? Fuggedaboudit.

I bet he has a cruise control strategy to maintain decreasing IAS as weight decreases with fuel
burnoff. He can maintain that IAS by powering back or by increasing altitude- and he would know that by maintaining that IAS for the weight, running LOP, he can accurately predict his nautical air miles per gallon for the entire flight. Altitude would make little difference for range, lotsa difference for TAS. The wild card is the wind.

He's got an IO 550 with higher compression ratio, needs all that power to lift that fuel to altitudes where he can level off and get good TAS with a low IAS near Vbr for his weight. Once up there, he would have to crank back the power, more and more as fuel burns off. I think I read his cruise fuel flow was 11 gph down to 8 at the far end.

Also would bet that he has a ground crew computing things like best route for pressure pattern nav, getting the least time to cover his route, not necessarily the shortest route.

Would hope he is taking aspirin to reduce DVT risk, might be going further with heparin analogs, but if he can lay down, that improves venous return, and he can also do isometrics to keep the flow going.

This guy is no "wrong way Corrigan", I bet he has exhaustingly researched every facet of these flights.

After the Voyager RTW there were some excellent publications with data and strategy used. I'm hoping he has provision for data recording and photography and eventually gets it all published.

Eagerly awaiting departure on the south pole transit, certainly the most demanding of the entire trip.

Does anyone know what he is using for navigation aids in the South Pole region?
Is GPS is available? A long time ago, I flew near the North Pole, and we, a navigator really, used Grid navigation. I was a new copilot and just hoped the Nav knew what he was doing.

I think his flights should be getting more attention.

I saw an update article on AOPA's website. He is waitng in Punta Arenas, Chile for a cold front over the South Ocean to move east. He's got to fly through that area, and there's icing now. Weather is forecasted to be better on Wednesday afternoon. His GPS tracks should come up on that SpiderTracks page. I'm guessing that GPS will still work for nav, because I don't think he'll be going over the actual South Pole.

The article says that his Hawaii stop will be at Hilo, not Honolulu, and Alaska will be at Nome instead of Fairbanks - not sure why the change.

Tony, I think you and I are dating ourselves. Prior to GPS, the military used grid navigation when operating within 30 degrees latitude of the poles (60 degrees north or south latitude). That was how I navigated as well. I suspect that todays aviators are probably not proficient in grid navigation as GPS has probably all but eliminated that requirement.

GPS will work just fine. There are 24 satellites up and they cover the earth adequately.

For sure he is getting sleep.

In my singlehanded sailing days, I would sleep with a digital egg timer clipped on the collar of my shirt. I would set it for one hour. When it went off, I would do a quick scan to make sure all was well and then go back to sleep for another hour. Depending on where I was, sometimes I would do 2 hours. I had all sorts of alarms set, including a radar alarm that would go off if the radar painted anything within a specified distance. Honestly though, the boat would wake up an experienced sailor. If the wind picked up even 5 knots, the noise in the rigging would wake me out of a dead sleep. If the wind shifted enough to where the sails were out of trim, I could feel it even from my cabin (although if the weather was good, sometimes I would sleep in the cockpit).

People always asked if I was worried about running into something. The answer is no! I was far more worried about falling off the boat. There is nobody to turn around to pick you up!

After a 14 day crossing, you were ready to get an entire night's sleep without waking up!

What's goin on? For the last couple of days I've checked and he hasn't moved--still on
the ground at the tip of South America????

See my reply on the previous page. That explains it.