22-Jun-2015 Source: HeliHub.com
On Saturday 13th June, Russian helicopter pilot Sergey Ananov started his Round the Globe Solo flight, aiming to be the first person to complete a circumnavigation in a helicopter of under 1,000kg MTOW.
Taking off from Moscow, the planned round goes eastbound through Siberia to Alaska, then south down the west coast of Canada and the USA and Canada before going east through to Florida, north up the eastern seaboard of the US through to Newfoundland, crossing to Greenland, Iceland and the Faroe Islands into Europe and back to the Moscow start point. Total planned distance is about 40,000 km
Ananov took a day off flying on Wednesday 17th in Yakutsk, and by the end of Friday 19th had (in just six days flying) completed 55.1 hours and a distance of 8,550km (5313 miles, or 4616 nautical miles). Today he plans entering the US at Nome in Alaska.
The aircraft being flown is a German registered 2004-build aircraft, and from photos released on the project facebook page (see below) has a rather rudimentary auxiliary tank setup on the passenger seat.
In 2013, Ananov broke two world records which had stood for 52 years. On 22 February 2013, he made a “Distance without landing” flight in a Robinson R22 1232 km (previous record: 1176.79) from Moscow to Ufa (Russia) and a “Distance over a closed circuit” flight of 1062 km (previous record: 1016.20 km) in Moscow, thus breaking the long held records set by American pilot L. W. Hartwig in 1961. At that time, Ananov already held the record for “Speed over a recognised course” with 34.6 km/h in 2008, and had sent to the FAI two preliminary world record claims for “Highest take-off” and “Altitude with 100 kg payload” for flights achieved in March 2013.
See also
John Burcote – HeliHub.com
