The route
Sollner and Moore departed New Jersey on May 25. The first stop was Cuba, Missouri. From there the trip included stops in La Cholla, Arizona; El Cajon, California; Oakland, California; Hilo, Hawaii; Majuro, Marshall Islands; Pohnpei, Micronesia; Truk Islands, Micronesia; Koror, Palau; Sultanate of Brunei; Kota Kinabalu, Malaysia; Phuket, Thailand; Bombay, India; Bahrain; Irákleion, Greece; Barcelona, Spain; Santa Maria, the Azores; St. John's, Newfoundland; and Bangor, Maine. They landed at Sky Manor Airport in New Jersey on July 4 after flying more than 22,000 miles.
You might think that a fella well into his 70s or his friend, who had celebrated 82 birthdays, had seen it all. But Dick Sollner, 76, and Bill Moore, 82, thought there was still more to experience. So they flew around the world in Sollner's Piper Twin Comanche.
What they'll probably remember the longest, however, is not the picture-postcard beauty of some of the exotic places they visited, or the grinding poverty they saw in others, but the myriad unforeseen problems and eerie experiences they never could have anticipated.
Both men are seasoned pilots. Sollner learned to fly in the Navy during World War II, and he flew for Eastern Airlines for 31 years.
A member of the Flying Rotarians, he flew to the Rotarian convention in Munich, Germany, in 1987, in the same Twin Comanche with his future son-in-law. "That was a 10,000-mile trip," he said, "40 percent of the distance around the world. That's what made me think about this flight. I thought, why not go all the way?"
After he sold some property and came into a financial windfall, he said to himself, "What better way to celebrate than by making that flight around the world?"
Well now, you want company on a long trip like that — somebody capable of handling a few of the chores involved. So he called Moore, whom he had known for 10 years. Moore had been an instructor pilot for the Navy during World War II, then he ferried aircraft for the Royal Air Force Transatlantic Ferry Command. After the war he was a corporate pilot for the Kaiser-Frazer Corporation for 10 years, as well as chief test pilot for the Kaiser-built Fairchild C-119. Following that he served as a corporate pilot for Industrial Indemnity, a division of Bechtel Corporation, from 1955 to 1974. After leaving Bechtel he operated a little charter business of his own. So he had some pretty good credentials. And he was ready, willing, and able.
Sollner started planning the trip in January 2002. The first step was investing $42,000 in radio, navigation, and weather detection equipment. The next step was engaging a flight-planning organization to handle such things as landing permits, overflight permission, availability of fuel, weather briefings, ground handling, and flight-plan filing.
For all the advanced planning, the one thing you can count on when undertaking such a flight is that the unexpected is out there waiting for you. Sollner planned their flight traveling westward, which is the reverse of the normal procedure. They went the opposite way because much of their route was planned near the equator and the equatorial winds at low altitude are easterly. But more important, flying west with the sun gave them 17 hours of daylight versus 10 hours flying the other way.
Also, their schedule would just beat the monsoon season.
They took off from Sky Manor Airport in New Jersey on May 25, 2002, and planned to return on the Fourth of July. They scheduled their trip, which was dedicated to the Rotarians, so they could be at the Rotarian convention in Barcelona, Spain, on June 23 to attend the Flying Rotarians banquet.
Sollner's airplane holds 120 gallons of fuel, 114 of which is usable. They needed a lot more. At El Cajon, California, they removed the backseats and installed two auxiliary tanks, holding a total of 145 gallons. That gave them a range of 3,000 miles or 20 hours of flying time. Their longest leg was from Oakland, California, to Hilo, Hawaii, which took 14 hours and 15 minutes. The next leg, from Hilo to Majuro in the Marshall Islands, took 14 hours.
The first unexpected problem they encountered was over the Pacific Ocean an hour and a half after takeoff from Oakland. They were equipped with HF (high frequency) radio, which is required on long overwater flights. But the controllers couldn't pick up their HF transmissions.
"They called us and said if we didn't return, we'd be served with a violation," said Sollner. "So after an hour-and-a-half flight over the ocean, we did a one-eighty and came back.
"There are not that many HF radios in GA aircraft so there are few avionics technicians around who are familiar with HF equipment.
"At Oakland airport, no one knew anything about HF radios," Sollner said. "Someone there told us about a man who worked on radios in boats who had a reputation as an expert on HF. We contacted him and he came out and looked at our set. He shook his head and said it wasn't much good, but he agreed to work on it on his day off.
"He wound up installing a new HF system and we took off for Hilo for the second time, after a delay of three days. This time the radio worked well. We were required to report our position every hour. That meant we had 14 waypoints to report between Oakland and Hilo. In three cases our transmissions didn't get through. We contacted airliners in the area who relayed our messages for us."
But the unexpected, in the form of a real crisis, was still out there waiting for them.
It caught up with them as they were approaching Pohnpei in the Caroline Islands of the Pacific.
"It was raining and visibility was poor so we were paying close attention to our instruments," said Sollner. "As we were descending through the poor weather conditions, we heard an oil canning of the auxiliary fuel tanks behind us. Right after that there was a strong smell of gasoline in the cabin."
Fortunately, neither of them are smokers. And they were in luck because they were close to their destination and not hours away over the open ocean.
"As we were in our descent the gas tank imploded," Sollner recounted. "Visibility was a mile and a half. Fortunately, we were on the ground in about 10 minutes.
"As soon as we cut the engines we jumped out to examine the tanks in the back," Sollner said. The rear of the cabin was soaked in gasoline. A welded seam had pushed in and opened, spilling fuel. "So here we were on a tiny island in the middle of the Pacific, not yet halfway around the world, and we were stuck with a leaky gas tank."
Lady Luck was on their side. Caroline Airways, a charter operation that provides air service between the Caroline Islands, which stretch for several hundred miles, was headquartered at the Pohnpei Airport where they landed.
"We met Alex, the fellow who ran the operation," said Sollner. "He looked things over and said it would be a major operation but he could fix it.
"They had to remove the tanks. That required taking off the door and taking out the front seats and the pilot's armrest. And then it was a very tight squeeze to maneuver the tanks out. The job required a welder. Alex had one available.
"He repaired the leaking seam," said Sollner, "and then pressure tested the tanks before putting them back in the airplane.
"Putting them back was as much of a struggle as taking them out. After they finally got them reinstalled they detected a pinhole that did not show up in the pressure test. So they had to remove the tanks all over again to put in a patch. As they were putting them back for the second time, as carefully as they could, they accidentally hit the window on the pilot's side. It was a double-pane window. For some reason the outer pane cracked, but not the inner one, which they hit.
"They taped up the outer pane with especially strong tape and we took off for Koror on the Island of Palau, more than nine hours away." A potential disaster had been averted. Or had it?
"Two hours out, I suddenly felt cold air on the back of my neck," said Moore. "We looked around and noticed the taped window had slipped down and there was a crack between the panes and the top of the window frame. The crack grew larger and the window suddenly shattered and blew out. The noise was almost explosive. We were seven hours from our destination. But luckily, we were over the beach at the Truk Islands. We radioed the nearby airfield to say we were making an emergency landing and we explained why.
"Alex happened to be flying at the time and he heard our transmission. He told us to go to the hardware store in town and buy a piece of one-quarter-inch plexiglass, silicone sealant, and an electric jig saw, and he would come and fix it."
"He came and in two hours, he made and installed a new window," said Sollner. "The work had to be signed off by an IA [an A&P with inspection authorization]." Alex held that designation.
"Back in the states," Sollner mused, "the job probably would have taken more than a day. But Alex could do more in an hour than the rest of us could do in a day. And his work was A-1."
On the leg from Thailand to Bombay, Sollner and Moore learned that poet Robert Burns was right when he wrote, "The best laid schemes o' mice and men Gang aft a-gley." Sollner planned the trip to avoid the monsoon season. But their problems set them behind schedule and they had the misfortune to run into the first monsoon of the season.
"Before we left I installed a $3,000 Stormscope," Sollner said, "but in a monsoon, there is no lightning or electrical discharge for the Stormscope to pick up. So it was useless.
"There is not the turbulence in a monsoon that you experience in U.S. storms," Sollner explained, "but you do encounter severe downdrafts. We hit some that dropped us 400 feet."
They were flying on an instrument flight plan and consequently were required to maintain an assigned altitude. That can be somewhat difficult in a monsoon. "You don't fight it," said Sollner. "You ride it out and you will come back up again."
They weathered the storm and landed in Bombay in heavy rain.
When they arrived they had another surprise waiting for them. The flight-planning service had advised them that the airport would receive a shipment of avgas a couple of weeks prior to their arrival. Even though they were more than a week behind schedule, the fuel shipment was even further behind than they were. The airport had only 150 liters (37 gallons). They had to fly to Ahmedabad, 200 miles away, to get fuel.
"Once we got our fuel and were ready to depart for Bahrain, via a route that took us over Pakistan, we learned that India would not clear us to fly over Pakistan. Instead we were sent out over the Indian Ocean.
"A U.S. Navy ship on the high seas picked us up on radar. They radioed us and asked that we identify ourselves. We gave them our aircraft registration number, 178E, and told the Navy we were on our way to Bahrain. They cleared us on our route.
"When we got to Bahrain, one of our two generators was failing. There was no repair facility at the airport so we flew on to Crete, a 10-hour-and-20-minute flight. When we arrived in Crete we learned there was no mechanic there. So we flew on to Sabadell, the general aviation airport for Barcelona, another eight hours and 40 minutes away." The pair arrived in time to make the Flying Rotarians banquet with five hours to spare.
But before heading home, the generators needed repairs. "There was an engine overhaul facility at Sabadell and they overhauled the generator. When they finished, it didn't work. They overhauled it a second time. This time it worked. "I brought an old regulator with me as a backup. They removed the new solid-state regulator and installed the old regulator, which worked fine," said Sollner.
"We never had a problem with the regulators," Moore commented. "But they had never seen a solid-state model. When they saw the old carbon pile regulator Dick had brought along as a backup, they recognized that and installed it."
"We flew on to the Azores," said Sollner, "and when we got ready to leave we checked the generators and only one was working. The one that was overhauled twice wasn't working. There were no mechanics there so we were faced with a choice: Cross the rest of the Atlantic with the one generator or sit there where there was no mechanic and try to figure out what to do. We decided to proceed to St. John's, Newfoundland, a 10- hour overwater flight.
"We had a handheld GPS and nav/com so we could have found our way to Newfoundland even if the generator failed. But we had no problem, and after a couple of days in St. John's for rest and sightseeing we took off for Bangor, Maine. We had to have our auxiliary tanks removed. Regulations prohibit flying over the United States with [non-certified] auxiliary tanks."
They arrived back at Sky Manor Airport on schedule on the Fourth of July to a warm welcome from a sizable group of well-wishers.
Sollner had dubbed the trip "Flight for Fellowship" to draw attention to the little-known Rotary Fellowship Program, which includes a host of special membership affinity groups such as the Flying Rotarians. The words Flight for Fellowship were painted on the side of the Twin Comanche fuselage alongside the Rotarian's emblem.
By the time they got back, Sollner and Moore had a new appreciation of how different things are in other parts of the world.
We complain about paying $2.50 or $3 for a gallon of gas. They paid $9.25 at Crete. At most of their stops in the Pacific — Majuro, Pohnpei, Truk, Palau, and Malaysia — there were no fuel pumps or trucks. They had to buy fuel from 55-gallon drums and it was pumped out by hand.
Only Majuro had an electric pump, but Sollner and Moore had to pay for a whole drum whether they used it all or not. They did duck one financial blow by not landing in Cairo, Egypt: The landing fee there was $500.
They did find some bargains, however. Hotel rooms were extraordinarily cheap in some places. There is a dearth of tourists in many of the exotic destinations they visited and the hotels, many of them unusually luxurious, were empty. They paid $99 for a $300 room at one stop.
When they landed back at Sky Manor, they had flown 158 hours and covered about 23,000 miles. They estimated the trip cost about $90,000.
Was it worth it?
If you saw the grins on their faces when they climbed out of the Twin Comanche, you wouldn't need to ask.
Jack Elliott, AOPA 107705, of Warren, New Jersey, is an aviation writer and 1999 winner of the Max Karant Award for Lifetime Excellence in Aviation Coverage. He owns a Piper Arrow and has been flying for more than 49 years.
A complete account of Sollner and Moore's trip, with photos, is available online ( www.flightaroundtheworld.com).
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