No need to wonder, nothing sinister. Derrick flew to Charleville to bring back TC-T's dirty washing

Read more: Flying solo across the world: Pilot following in footsteps of her heroine Amy Johnson makes her first landing in India | Daily Mail Online
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Hey there Jay Sata, you're a newspaper guy, what does the term "media partner" mean? How does that relationship normally work? which partner gathers the source info? Is it purely an info/data transfer relationship or is money exchanged ?

Your thoughts

Edit to add: Looks like Tracey had not one but TWO FAA certified piston A&P mechanics on the expedition. The chase plane pilots qualifications

Markus Loeschenkohl
B1.1/C Certifying Aircraft Engineer Pilatus Porter PC 6,SAAB 340,Single and Multiengine Piston Group Rating,FAA A&P

Apologies if this has been mentioned before but, while we're on the subject of 'main sponsors who got the wrong idea about solo', - this is the February 2016 issue of 'Silverkris - The Travel Magazine of Singapore Airlines'.

SilverKris February 2016 - Download SilverKris tablet edition on the App Store / Google Play Store now!

QUOTE - "THE AVIATRIX. The second woman to fly solo from the UK to Australia etc. :ooh:

So let's round it up, what have we got:

1. Herne Bay vid
2. "Alone" in Seattle
3. Waved off solo, picked Ewald up round the corner.
4. Feeding her media partner solo tales and not correcting non partners
5. Kidding on she's Gandhi on the outreach
6. Kidding on she's a Shuttleworth & display pilot

And lastly but probably the most egregious of them all, being an invited speaker to the WRI primarily due to holding herself out to be a shinning example of female achievement then proceeding to tell the good ladies a complete pack of lies over tea and home made scones and jam.

If the flying thing doesn't pan out for her she should get a senior level job with her banker mates at Artemis.

Interesting observation I've made over the years. Those that have to tell the world how good they are, how hard it was or what danger they faced without any prompting or prying are usually charlatans.

deefer dog, thanks for your detective work. :ok: Can I now safely assume it wasn't a dream then? :p Don't think he knew quite just how much dirty washing he brought back.

Reading between the lines it appears Ewald is described as "excess baggage" on the first leg from Farnborough to Merville-Calonne.

source http://www.birdinabiplane.com/news/newsletters/0810/

I suspect the plan was for him to board the Spirit of Artemis in L2K but they used Merville after she failed to land due to crosswinds.

They then flew to Charleville for a night together before Derrick returned to Fowlmere and TCT and Ewald flew on to Hungary.

Given her previous lack of cross country experience and suggested poor nagivation skills she would have found the flight to Hungary challenging.

If my theory is correct the only part of the Farnborough to Sydney flight where she flew solo was the first leg.

How do we discover how many POB the Stearman had on departute from Merville?

Hi megan. Not at all, it was you and your dream that led the hounds to the trail and I'm absolutely sure that it was a yet another lead that Tracey would have preferred we didn't follow up.

Some may think "so what, she had a chase plane" (again) but it's now clear that the charade at Farnborough was just another component of the deception that she and her team had deliberately crafted in order to fool her followers and the press.

Payload
 

OK, I may be wrong and/or the question may have already been asked and answered.

Most people who do long-distance stuff in an SEP minimise payload so they can maximise fuel (see MK and his 5 Gal ferry tank on the front seat).

So, when planning Africa and Australia there must have been a decision point whereby the whole route was planned around standard fuel (i.e. the stuff that is is the normal tanks) rather than the advantage brought about by having a ferry tank installed. This is actually core to the whole trip and would have been a very early planning decision. As Artemis is an N reg aircraft, there aren't too many regulatory hoops to jump through in order that you could add 85kg of fuel where Ewald ended-up sitting. 85kg = 120l = quite a bit more airborne time = longer legs.

My question - why didn't they go for range when scoping/planning? Was this due to the aspiration to have numerous "outreach" stops or was it because they ordinarily expected to have 85kg of pink flesh (dead weight) sat in the front?

Maybe it was something to do with flying into prohibited airspace....and joking about it... as well is being disparaging about African ATC.

Thank you all for the information supplied. Spurred on by a Private Message (not sure if the sender wanted me to make them known)

Two images of the Stearman cockpits.
Rear one shows what looks like a hard-fitted nav pad
Front one is a readily removeable (velcro fastened) nav pad.

Ewald appears to have been the main navigator on these flights and removed his kit at the end of each leg. This could serve two purposes, one is to allow off-aircraft programming of the next leg and also mask the idea that someone up front was doing more than suggested.

The winds at L2K were NE'ly at about 10knots. So almost across the runway. https://www.wunderground.com/history...ic=&reqdb.wmo=

Charleville, with a similar oriented runway had similar conditions
https://www.wunderground.com/history...ic=&reqdb.wmo=

May I ask someone with more knowledge of LA flying to check this for me please and put a pilot perspective on it. If I am right then she couldn't get in to L2K because of crosswinds but managed to get into Charleville with the same crosswinds.

Here is the original press release which appears to be a red herring.
The risk of a Le Touquet landing would have presented the possiblity of Ewald being spotted by UK pilots on a cross channel lunch trip.

Merville is nearby but in the middle of nowhere so conveniant for him to climb aboard?

Her excuse for the change of plans is here.

In the departure video there is footage of her map and kneeboard. Can anyone grab a still and enlarge to read the frequencies and info on it?

If an instructor rated, 30 years experienced, self-proclaimed Shuttleworth pilot can't handle a 10 kt crosswind, what on earth were they doing setting off for Australia ?

LFAT 1st October 2015 - one runway 14/32. Actual weather on the day below. Experienced pilot would not have had difficulty, but it would be reasonable to expect a prudent pilot to look for an alternate.

https://www.wunderground.com/history...eqdb.wmo=07003

LFQT 1st October 2015 - one runway 04/22. Actual weather on the day reported at LFQQ (Lille - 17 miles from LFQT).
The wind here was of similar strength, but in view of the runway orientation this would have presented little difficulty for any pilot. Pretty much straight into wind landing.

https://www.wunderground.com/history...eqdb.wmo=07015

This paragraph begs another question.

If she had excess baggage on the legs to Charleville how was it carried after Derrick left her
to continue the next day to Hungary?

I think we can assume what the excess baggage really was:ok:

'Seems to me that it would take a squadron to carry the excess baggage that TCT has created for herself with her misrepresentations.

I don't imagine that Mr. Gunning was a part of the deception, he was probably just a pilot enthusiastic to be a part of an event, as many of us would be, until we learned of it's underhandedness....

So how did Ewald cross the English Channel if not in the Cherokee?

Call me a nitpicker but if you zoom in at 9:34 of the Farnborough departure video you see Tracey climbing into the plane with a kneeboard and a chart. A few things strike me as odd. Firstly it's the layout of the pilot notes for the flight, they seem to be compleltey disjointed and unnecessarily spread out taking up the entire page with relatively little information and look more like what I would expect to see when my teenage son is taking the family order for the Chinese carry-out. My limited experience of multi stop long x-country flying crossing FIR's and international borders and what I'd expect to see from someone who's embarking as PIC on such a flight would be compartmentalised and condensed info blocks for space saving, leaving room for anticipated copying of any ATC instructions and weather info enroute. Perhaps with departure, enroute and destination control, weather and VOR frequencies uniformly down one side in small print. Is it possible The comms and nav on this flight were handled as a "flight of 2" from the Piper?

Also there only appears to be one chart for the SE of England and not one for France, does the English one cover NE airfields in France?

Edit to add: I'm not taking about the penmanship ( god knows mine is like chicken scratches) Im referring to the scarcity of info for this type of flight and the hodge podge mannner it's written is not what I'd expect of a pilot that flew the entire continent of Africa

Ewald flew with Derrick in G-JACS to Merville. Take that as FACT. Ewald joined Tracey in the Stearman in France. Question I hope to have answered on Monday is did he join her at Merville or Charleville? Whichever way you look at it the whole event at Farnborough was a charade, and the use of G-JACS to ferry Ewald out for the rendezvous was simply the means of making it happen.

Derrick Gunning was not the architect of the deceit - he just happened to play an unsuspecting role in it. Quite what he carried in the way of baggage that would be needed after one or two legs (other than Ewald) is a bit of a mystery - or perhaps it's the excuse they designed in advance, in case anyone discovered the truth.

Piperboy, I hope to discover very soon how much time elapsed between Tracey's departure and that of G-JACS. My bet is that Ewald would be very anxious to get up pretty close to TCT as soon as possible to supervise her proceedings.