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[RHerron]

10:00 p.m. June 18, '04



From Andy Keech today: Official as of 10 minutes ago. Little Wing LW-5 reached 26,408 feet.
8,049 meters. Higher than I thought Woodstock had gone. Five
miles is 26,400'. Five miles high has a good ring to it and I'm
tickled to death.
Time-to-climb 6.000 meters (20,000 feet) was 24:28 minutes.
So, there it is, finally!

[le-wardy]

Ron,
If your Little Wings go any higher, you may have to re-name Little Wings to Angel Wings !! :D

Congrats just the same. You must be a proud Dad about your 'lil high achiever in the gyro family.

[barnstorm2]

That's great! Quite a club to be in.. Wallis, Earhart.....

[StanFoster]

Ron: Congratulations.. :)

[PW_Plack]

Wow! My fingers are numb just thinking about it. Is Andy still intent on beating Burt Rutan to the X-Prize?

[BUD ONEAL]

Ron,
Great that it happened on my 66th. birthday, That way I'll remember the day!!
Bud

[Aussie_Paul]

Wow!!!! what a great man and machine combination!!!!

Aussie Paul.

[RHerron]

Bud,

Andy made this flight nearly two months ago. It has taken this long for the NAA to review the flight recorder and make it official. News had leaked out shortly after the flight but we didn't want it published until it was absolutely official. Now it is official, and it was actually 208 feet higher than Andy's GPS indicated originally.

We have copies of the flight recorder traces (GPS and sealed barometer) and it is clear that a steady, solid rate of climb was still going on when he pulled power and descended. He did this (pulled power) because he had only requested 26,000 from ATC.

Yes, we are very pleased with this project. Thank you all for your positive comments, it means a lot.

[Hognose]

Great! Lots of gyro FAI records being set this year between Andy and Barry.

cheers

-=K=-

[Hognose]

Ron --

I'm writing this up as a news story for Aero-News. Can you and/or Andy drop me a line at my private email which is kevin [at] network impossible dot com, with the network impossible being one long word.

We'll also want a good photo each of Andy and the gyro -- ideally, from the record attempt. I think we have file photos of Andy and his LittleWing but "new" makes the "news".

I need to know the exact date of the record, also (FAIs website hasn't had the rotorcraft area updated in some time). And what weight subclass Andy competed in. Seems to be you could load up an LW to be in class E-3a or E-3b, but what do I know?

I'd like to interview both of you by email or by phone (as you prefer). I also want to hear what Bill Clem has to say about Andy breaking his record!

Of course, everybody who cares about gyros is probably already here on this forum....

cheers

-=K=-

[RHerron]

Kevin,

I will get with you via E-mail with Andy's E-mail address too.
The flight was on April 21 as I recall, Andy will know for sure.
I will let him relate the story to you.
There were no other aircraft flying when he did the flight so there were no photos taken while the record flight was taking place.
He had attempted the flight two previous days but was not allowed to depart due to security around Frederick (Camp David is nearby and the President and guests were there). He had to get up well before dawn, drive the 50 miles to Frederick, meet the NAA observers only to find out that the airport was closed to any "altitude activity" on two days prior to the actual flight.
On this particular morning he was allowed to take off, cleared to 26,000 and was to make the flight as quickly as possible.
That he did.
Anyway, he did a photo flight after that so he will have some photos for you I'm sure.
Bill Clem knows all about the flight. He called to congratulate me as soon as word got out. I thought that was very nice of him. We have long admired Bill's high-flight. I was there when he did it and I remember how his neck was purple from frostbite.
Andy didn't have any problem like that to deal with being fully-enclosed and all.
Thanks!