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Issue #393: Tales of General Aviation Adventure
Strap in for the adventure issue
Amy Johnson was one of the world’s most pioneering female aviators. Born into a family of fish merchants, she undertook a series of adventures. But the most famous was flying from London to Darwin in a Gipsy Moth, becoming the first woman to make the trip solo in 1930. This month, a fantastic book crossed my desk from Amanda Harrison, telling the story of her attempt to recreate the flight in a Tiger Moth in 2019. “She had this mad idea of buying an airplane and flying it down to Australia,” Harrison told me. “Her saying was, ‘If I can, you can’, and I very kindly borrowed that from her.” Amanda is cut from the same cloth as her forebearer, and the book contains wonderful anecdotes showing her passion for flying.
At the same time, another fantastic tale reached us. Hayden McDonald became the first autistic pilot to fly a lap of Australia. During the trip, the then-22-year-old spent more than 80 hours flying more than 8,000 nautical miles in the cockpit. It was particularly challenging given he was forced to pause the trip at Kununurra because bushfires kept his J-120 Jabiru grounded. Jake Nelson spoke to McDonald both before and after his adventure, and in this issue, he tells his story in full.
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Why not, then, I concluded, make issue 393 about adventure? Aside from those two tales, we chart the forgotten story of the Australian man who died in one of the world’s worst airship disasters, the team measuring the atmosphere in the skies, and the Alaska dispatchers who chased the eclipse. Not to mention, of course, the ultimate adventure aircraft: the Super Hornet, recently confirmed to be given a life extension by the RAAF.
Elsewhere, the Aero Circus team are back with their best feature yet, describing how they kept their cool (or maybe not) when things when wrong midair. The headline says it all. Plus, there are all the regulars, such as Warbirds, Traffic, Register and Inside the Archive.
Enjoy the issue,
Adam
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