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Old 8th Mar 2013, 20:44
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mary meagher
 
Join Date: Jan 2009
Location: Oxford, UK
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Thanks to the mods for weeding out the irrelevant. And please, people, tell us about disabled pilots who can inspire those that may haven't thought about taking wing. I can think of at least two, personally known to me.

The first one came to grief flying a weight shift microlite; with only his legs for undercarriage, it was an attempt to fly a loop that came unstuck in his case, and he ended up in a wheelchair. Not a man to give up easily, he became a solo and qualified cross country glider pilot. Story goes he was flying his specially equipped K6 glider and landed out in a farmers field. So he got on his radio and called on the distress frequency. An airliner overhead picked up the message; that he had made a field landing, and couldn't walk. Somehow this was passed on to the emergency services, without the clarification that his inability to walk had happened before his landing, and was not in any sense an emergency. Plenty of help arrived, including a helicopter.....

The intrepid pilot went on to become on of the country's top professional gliding instructors. He now flies a three axis machine and straps his wheelchair under the wing, so no longer requiring assistance in case of a landout.
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