Article is kinda written for the layman and gets a little overly dramatic, like with the "not designed for flight over water" thing, but an interesting tale of an impressive feat nonetheless.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2569154/British-daredevil-father-fuelled-200-CHOCOLATE-BARS-makes-history-person-fly-Canada-tiny-microlight.html

Cool. Hopefully one of the aviation magazines will publish a story with more technical details. And personally, I'd love to have a plane with only 1,000 mile range.

Phil

Since I fly both multis and singles over water I wonder what surface conditions are. I checked today what the surface conditions indicated...

40' waves, 35F water, sea ice, 50kt winds

Sea ice 2014.03.08 ...

Amazing flight. Some of the writing and quotes from this guy makes you wonder though.

"was able to save fuel by gliding when the weather allowed" did he shut the engine down over water?

"ate hundreds of Mars bars to survive"

"The amount of concentration required to keep the twitchy plane flying true was so great that I couldn't lapse, not even for a second. If I did, I could have plunged to my death, which nobody would have wanted"

"Jon said the lightweight engine is not designed to work under strain"

"He also had to deal with a lack of oxygen when he was forced to fly 'Samson' at high altitude to get above low-lying clouds"

Good stuff.

It was quite the adventure no doubt, but didn't some guy or guys fly a trike from South Africa to Oshkosh maybe 5 years ago? I'm sure they went that same northernly route. A trike would be called a microlight over there as well I think. Think it was featured in one of the flying magazines. Not at all bashing what this guy did, just wondering about it being the first time.. Jim

Just did a bit of googleing after my last post.. It was in 1999, Oliver Aubert and Mike Blyth flew from South America to Capetown South Africa by way of Iceland, Greenland, ect. Took them 8 months, they flew 27,000 miles in their 2 trikes. They made a movie about it called South to South. (Clip on youtube) Found some interesting info about it by googling South to South microlight.. I see they went west to east across the Atlantic, so maybe that does make the east to west trip a first. Jim Chuk

Wow, it makes the crossing by the British guy seem like child's play. Both microlights had Rotax 912's. But open cockpit? Good grief! I wonder how many candy bars these guys ate along the way!

There was also a French guy who flew his homebuilt Kompress CH7 helicopter with a Rotax engine all the way from France to Oshkosh in 2010. As I recall he flew also via Iceland and Greenland.

http://www.eaavideo.org/video.aspx?v=234710803001

None of those flights ever happened. They're all just fiction. Flying a Rotax engine all the way across the Atlantic Ocean? Naw, never happened. Those high winding, low power piece of crap engines would never make it. Anyway, that's all experimental junk anyway. Rotax doesn't even know what a real certified aircraft engine is ... Oh, wait a minute ... they do know something about certified aircraft engines ... why I think they even make certified aircraft engines ... Wait a minute, I have one of their certified aircraft engines in my airplane. Wow, what a great engine. Light weight, fuel sipping, prefer to burn cheap auto fuel but will gladly burn expensive avgas, high power to weight ratio. Wow, yeah, all those things are true. What a great engine. Like a Timex, they just keep on running!