Pilotage

Mark Twombly is a former editor in chief of AOPA Pilot magazine who now resides in Florida.

We hadn't even moved out of our parking spot on the ramp before I began to get the feeling I'd made a mistake asking to fly. From the right seat Dan Dominguez had already warned me three or four times that the geared, supercharged, and opposed engines react grumpily to ham-fisted throttle jockeying.

Who could blame him for worrying? Those big old Lycoming GSO-480s can be cantankerous in insensitive hands. Besides, the airplane represented every bit of the past three years of Dan and buddy Chris Wall's lives, and a big part of their future as well. All of their time and all of their money had gone into buying the 44-year-old Aero Commander 560E, restoring it, and then flying it. Really flying it. Flying it around the world, in fact.

Dan and Chris were not much different than the other kids wearing cowboy hats and growing up in El Paso, Texas, except for their dream to someday circle the world in their own airplane. It may have sounded like a passing childhood fantasy, even to them, but the dream took root. Dan earned his private pilot certificate and an instrument rating at age 17, and that year the two took off in a rented Cessna 172 for a four-week adventure to Alaska and back.

After high school Dan left El Paso to attend college at the University of Rochester (New York) to study economics. Chris enrolled in an electrical engineering degree program at Rice University in Texas. Dan worked through school as a flight instructor and night freight pilot, while Chris spent his college nights earning an A&P certificate.

In 1997 they resolved to pursue their childhood dream, and with $15,000 in borrowed education funds they found their perfect airplane cultivating weeds at the Guthrie, Oklahoma, airport. It was missing its logbooks and airworthiness certificate, and looked every bit its 43 years, which was more than the combined ages of its two new owners.

Chris led the effort to get the airplane back in the air so they could ferry it to Rochester, where they would spend most of the next two years preparing for Worldflight 2000.

The task was formidable, and not just because it operated on subsistence funding. Dan and Chris depended heavily on donated parts, repairs, and labor. But with just four days to go before the September 13, 2000, departure deadline, things did not look promising. They were sleeping in their office, had no radios in the airplane, were thousands of dollars in debt, and had no money to fly the trip. At 10 a.m. that day Dan received a telephone call from the chief executive of America Online, who offered up a $40,000 donation.

Buoyed by the infusion of cash, the Worldflight team worked feverishly to finish the airplane. A new instrument panel with donated radios and the all-important CD player was fabricated in one night and then installed, wired, and certified in two days. Dan and Chris departed for Bangor, Maine, just about on schedule to install a 150-gallon fuselage ferry tank. At 22 gallons per hour and 160 knots true airspeed, the airplane would need the extra fuel to provide a comfortable margin for the longer legs. Next stop: the Azores.

The two flew mostly at night when the air was cool and tranquil. Daylight hours were spent dealing with sometimes-intractable foreign customs officials and preparing the airplane for the next leg. They often slept on hammocks strung underneath the wings.

Thanks to the many months of planning and preparation, a huge dollop of good luck, and the unbridled confidence born of youth and inexperience, the trip was remarkably trouble free. Their only serious in-flight problem occurred over the Middle East. A magneto began cross-firing, prompting Dan to shut down the affected engine. He made an emergency landing at an Egyptian military field, where they were met by guards carrying machine guns. Chris came up with a spare mag in his on-board parts warehouse, and soon they were airborne again.

After 220 hours of flying over a span of three months, they approached Rochester from the west, right on schedule. They'd flown the entire trip on IFR flight plans, both to ease transitions between different countries' airspace and also because they didn't have enough money to buy all the necessary VFR charts. They say the most important lesson they learned about long-distance overwater night flying is, "Don't look down."

If the mark of successful dreamers is undertaking the hard work to try and achieve their goals, then Dan Dominguez and Chris Wall must be considered world-class dreamers. While still teenagers they established a nonprofit organization to undertake projects that motivate kids to strive for more. The inspiration for the name they gave their airplane, Dreamcatcher, is an Indian myth that speaks to the power of dreams. According to Dan and Chris, some 23 million kids from around the world logged onto their "dare to dream" Web site ( www.worldflight2000.com) to track the progress of the flight.

Today they are busy writing two books about the flight, speaking to school and pilot groups, and dreaming up their next adventure.