Re-creating a record
Steve Fossett, co-pilot will duplicate 1919 flight crossing Atlantic from Newfoundland to Ireland

By MICHAEL STRAND

 Salina Journal “Yesterday I was in America,” said John Alcock in June 1919. “And I am the first man in Europe to say that.”

Alcock and co-pilot Arthur Whitten-Brown had just completed the first trans-Atlantic flight, going from Newfoundland to Ireland in just over 16 hours.

A replica of the Vickers Vimy, a biplane with a 68-foot wingspan, has been flying for more than 10 years; next month, pilots Steve Fossett and Mark Rebholz plan to retrace that journey.

The Vimy was parked Sunday and Monday in Salina, sharing Hangar 703 with the Virgin Atlantic GlobalFlyer, while Rebholz worked on the aircraft, preparing it for today’s flight to an experimental aircraft show in Osh Kosh, Wis.

Fossett flew the GlobalFlyer nonstop around the world, taking off and landing in Salina late this winter.

Based in California, Rebholz came to Salina from a stop in Lake Havasu, Ariz.

“Back when it was built, the sun never set on the British Empire,” Rebholz said. “Britain controlled Canada, India, Australia and wanted to connect the empire by air.”

The Vimy, intended as a World War I bomber, was the aircraft to do that, he said. It set three major records — from England to South Africa and from England to Australia, in addition to the trans-Atlantic flight.

“Handling is very poor by today’s standards,” Rebholz said, standing on the wing and retying a small shim where two wing stringers cross.

The shim keeps the two stringers from rubbing against each other and possibly breaking during flight.

Even powered with twin 600-horsepower engines, Rebholz said, the canvas-skinned aircraft is slow and ungainly.

“It was good for 1919, but they didn’t know any better,” he said. “It’s hard to fly, and if you let go of the controls, it just goes all over.”

Pilot and co-pilot/navigator sit side-by-side in the open cockpit, just feet from the 10€-foot-long propeller blades.
“You don’t wave at people on the ground,” Rebholz said.

Additionally, because the pilot and co-pilot sit in line with the propellers, rainwater or ice is thrown directly into the open cockpit.

That’s something Rebholz knows from experience.

He’s logged more than 800 hours flying the Vimy replica and has traveled all over the world in the process — usually at just 1,000 to 2,000 feet above the ground at about 70 miles per hour.

“I’ve been passed by bicycles, by trains,” he said. “If you get much of a head wind at all, you’re not moving much.”
Winds can make a considerable difference, he said.

“People always ask us when we’re leaving and when we’ll arrive, and we can’t say,” he said. “A five-mile-an-hour wind can mean a difference of hours. We might tell people we’ll arrive between 3 and 7.”

Fragile but durable

Despite its drawbacks, Rebholz said the Vimy is “a good, reliable airplane.”

It’s also the largest flying biplane in the world, he said: “Other biplanes are bigger, but they’re in museums.”

The canvas is fragile but relatively easy to repair, as numerous patches — many under the engines — attest.

“We drop tools sometimes,” Rebholz said, holding a pair of sharp pointed wire cutters. “I dropped these one time and they went straight through to the hangar floor,” puncturing the upper and lower surface of the wing on the way.

But, with a few square inches of spare canvas and some dope (a varnishlike product), the wing’s almost as good as new, Rebholz said, explaining that in more modern canvas craft, seams are cut with pinking shears, while the Vimy’s canvas is frayed along the edges.

The mission
Other things we now take for granted include GPS, a satellite navigation system that Fossett and Rebholz won’t use for the transatlantic flight. They’ll rely instead on a naval sextant and dead reckoning — just as Alcock and Whitten-Brown did.

That first journey was completed in 16 hours, 22 minutes, but Rebholz is expecting the recreation to take as long as 20 hours.

“They took off in crummy weather, but that weather gave them a nice tailwind,” Rebholz said, and Alcock’s flight averaged 100 knots, about 115 mph. “We’re going to fly in calmer weather, which means no tailwind.”

The Vimy’s 1994 England-to-Australia flight was documented in the May 1995 issue of National Geographic and in a National Geographic video, and the magazine is planning to document the transatlantic flight as well.

Rebholz points to a spot on the underside of the upper wing, a few feet behind the cockpit, where a test camera is mounted. If it holds up, National Geographic is planning to mount additional cameras on each wingtip pointing toward the flyers, and one at the back of the aircraft, as well, feeding the video to satellites.

If all goes as planned — and the weather cooperates — Fossett and Rebholz will take off June 14, the anniversary of the day Alcock and Whitten-Brown started their mission.

“We’re not setting any records,” Rebholz said. “It’s a tribute to early aviation.”

©2005 Salina Journal