Dear Mommy Thank you so much for your messages. They seem a bit unlike your usual style, but perhaps the strain has been getting to you. I’m sorry I’ve not had much time to write to you – but it’s not because I haven’t been thinking of you. Mike and I are both thinking about our mums a lot, it’s just that we’ve been really busy. We’re doing absolutely fine though, so there’s no real need to worry. Anyhow, we’ve now set the computer up in the aeroplane, so we can write while we’re flying. Right now we’re over the Pacific and we’ve got 809 nautical miles to go to Biak, which is in Indonesia, so this could be quite a long letter. The aeroplane is going very well and you may have seen that lots of people are taking an interest in our trip. There are quite a few questions that people have asked us, for example, what do Mike and I talk about while we’re flying, what speeds do we fly at, how much fuel do we use and so on. I know you’re not very technically minded, but anyhow mumsy – In the beginning, Mike and I spoke a lot about the flying, because we were quite uncertain of a lot of stuff, about how certain aspects of the plane would work out, what would happen if we had an engine failure, what to do if we ended up in the water, especially at night, and so on. We were also just so excited about everything that we would talk about the times and places ahead, who was watching us on the tracker, how to get the best film footage and so on. But now we’ve pretty much dealt with all of that stuff and we’re quite relaxed. Mike says he thinks we’re now quite “ahead of the plane”, and I think he’s right. Actually, we must be, because since Los Angeles we’ve spent quite a bit of our flying time reading. For example, I was given a copy of “The Catcher in the Rye” in Los Angeles and, as we both wanted to read, I cut it down the spine with my penknife. At midnight on the way to Hawaii Mike and I were both sitting up there in the darkness with our head torches on, above the ocean, quietly reading about Holden Caulfield’s adventures when he was kicked out of Pencey Prep, which I though was quite a place to be reading that stuff. Now we’ve even got to the point of editing our flip videos in flight so we can send them off when we land. Some people have also expressed an interest in our instruments. Well, it’s quite incredible, we mostly really only have two main instruments, called ‘MGL Voyagers’, which tell us just about everything we need to know, including how fast and in what direction we’re flying, our flight attitude, altitude, ground clearance and whether we’re ascending or descending, our heading and bearing as well as the track to the next waypoint and the distance and time to get there. Then they also tell us, all on the same screen, what the engine oil, cylinder head and exhaust gas temperatures are, the fuel levels in our 6 tanks, the fuel flow and pressure, the oil pressure, battery voltage and alternator current, the ambient pressure and temperature, the time, how long the engine’s been running and so on. Most importantly, before we left we did some programming (actually, a friend called Nicol did it), but the effect of that is that we also see our running fuel endurance in hours and minutes and our range, taking into account the ground speed, measured fuel flow and calculated fuel remaining, as we go. Those figures change in real time, so we can see, as we do it, the exact effect on our range and endurance of changing the throttle setting, the prop pitch and so on. It definitely does make our lives quite easy. Our other instruments are a Becker transponder, a Garmin navcom radio, an Insight Strikefinder, a Zaon TCAS, a Trio Avionics Autopilot, a PS Engineering intercom and a handheld Avmap GPS, which has been particularly useful for reporting to ATC. Anyhow, you should be able to see that we’re well equipped and so don’t worry about us at all. In case you’re interested, people have also asked about our airspeed and range. When we’re full of fuel we cruise with an indicated air speed of about 89 knots, which at 6 000 feet gives a true airspeed of about 98 knots. Then we burn around 19 litres of fuel per hour. When we’re close to empty we cruise at an indicated airspeed of about 96 knots, which gives a true airspeed of about 105 knots, and then we burn less than 17 litres per hour. We could of course go quite a bit faster if we wanted, but the main idea is to make sure we don’t run out of fuel, not to get where we’re going in a record time. Incidentally, by yesterday we’d flown for 162 hours since we left, and we had about 80 hours of flying left to do. Now its four and a half less. Oops, I see that I’m digressing – I’m afraid that Mike’s had an influence on me and I know you aren’t very interested in that kind of thing! Our health is great and we’re really living pretty well. It’s very interesting to get to see some of these places we’re going through. We’ve now decided to go a bit slower, so there’s also a bit of time to find out about the places. Chuuk, for example, seems like a very peaceful place, but it was the scene of a major battle during World War Two. The Japanese had been in control of the islands, which fall within a coral encrusted ring (the edge of an old volcano and probably 30 kilometres or so across), since the First World War. Anyhow, they weren’t really ready for the Americans who attacked them on 17 February 1944, first with a bunch of Hellcat fighters and then loads of bombers. In one day 250 Japanese aircraft were destroyed, almost all on the ground, and about 20 Japanese ships and one submarine were sunk. The ship wrecks are all mostly between the surface and 400 feet deep, so it turns out Chuuk has the best shipwreck diving in the world. Micronesia’s a pretty poor place though. There’s almost no tourism and outside of some fishing rights there’re no resources of any kind. The people are friendly enough (about as far from the New York phoneys which Holden Caulfield was writing about as could be), but there’s no real opportunity, so no-one’s pushing themselves. The men pretty much all chew betel nut most of the day (a rather gross habit) and there’s a lot of sitting around. I think there’re about 10 000 people just on the main Island, which has the court, parliament and administration of the Federated States of Micronesia on it, but there’s not a single bookstore or shop that sells a magazine or newspaper. It literally is impossible to get any book or magazine of any kind in Chuuk . I’m not joking – I tried in a focussed way for hours without any success. I did eventually bump into two missionaries though, and they’ve given me a copy of the last edition of the monthly ‘Church of Latter Day Saints’ magazine. I also got “War Cry”, the monthly Salvation Army publication from the hotel, but as you know those are both very different from my normal reading matter. Mother, one quite strange thing for me on this trip has been leaving children behind. On all my previous adventures I’ve hardly given a thought to home while I’m away (with the exception, of course, of you dear mummy). But this time it’s quite different and when I get back I’ll definitely have to advise my friends who are prospective adventurers to hold back on the kids until after they’ve done their big travels. I’m afraid my mind is definitely not what it was before as a consequence of Asha and Max and I certainly worry a bit about how they are going to affect my future adventures! Perhaps I’ll have to see a psychologist when I return. Anyhow, dear mumsy, I hope that everything is fine with you and that you’re not missing me (or Mike) too much. I’m afraid that despite your request, we won’t be able to offload too much fuel to make space for your shopping in Kuala Lumpur, because then we’re unlikely to make it home. Still, we promise to find something small and nice for you there. Mike sends his love you’ll be glad to hear that he really is being very nice to me. In fact everyone is being very nice and it’s lovely to get messages from all my friends, especially old school and university friends that I sometimes haven’t seen or heard of for years (Chris Barends?). Tim has been checking out the weather for us since the start of the trip and he really has been a star. To give an example, he emailed us this morning as follows –Ok Kids Looking sweet for your flight today – clear skies. Initially 5-10kts of westerly 270 but the higher you climb the lighter it will become. Half way across the route the wind will swing round and become ESE 120/10 kts at 8000 foot. You have a route clear of nasties until you get to the destination where you will encounter FEW CBs and some rain, so keep an eye out for them. The next leg on to Borneo is also looking good and clear of CB. But the day after, across Borneo (don’t crash there, there are cannibals in the jungle – not that they would find much of interest on you two scrawny bastards) to KL there has been a lot of CB activity all week and it is looking rough. It builds up late afternoon so, if you can, it would make sense to leave at 3-4am local time and reach destination by 2pm latest. Chat later or, if not, Viva!!Very kind of him, don’t you think? You just can’t do a trip like this without the help of friends and it makes me realise how lucky I am to have such a loving family and set of friends, especially of course Mike! Anyway, lots of love and thoughts to you, your darling son James
