www.PSFmagazine.com | November-December 2019 | 33 32 | November-December 2019 | Powered Sport Flying in the year to reach the Bering Strait before weather would prevent crossing it. After arranging for Roxy to stay in the Philippines, Norman went home to wait out the winter. The next year, he returned to the Philippines, retrieved Roxy, and took up his quest again, flying to Japan. From there, the next leg of his planned flight would take him into Russia and north toward the Bering Strait. Through the appropriate channels, he asked for permission to enter and fly in the Russian airspace. After a lengthy time, the request was refused. He asked again and was refused. He kept asking, languishing in Japan without that permission until the window for crossing the Bering Strait closed again. Once again, he left Roxy, this time in the back of the Japanese airport’s fire station, and returned to Larne. The following year, Norman returned to Japan and again sought permission from Russia to fly in its airspace. He had to be in Japan with Roxy and ready to go; with an approval, he would have only a short time to get underway. For three consecutive years, from 2011 to 2014, Norman returned to Japan, each year seeking the needed permission from Russia, making a request, waiting two weeks for a reply, getting a “nyet,” making another request, and waiting another two weeks, again and again, until weather closed the short season for flying the Bering Strait, but the requests were never approved. By the end of the summer of 2014, due to Russia’s annexation of Crimea, relationships between the UK, of which Norman was a citizen, and Russia had deteriorated, and with the political posturing, he felt the prospects for the needed permission had become even more unlikely. Confronted with that situation, Norman reluctantly made the decision to put Roxy in a container and have the gyroplane shipped to the US west coast, to the Evergreen Aviation and Space Museum at McMinnville in Oregon, where the diminutive Roxy was displayed underneath the towering Spruce Goose, the huge wooden airplane built by Howard Hughes. The following year, 2015, Norman went to McMinnville, and taking off from the museum’s airfield, he and Roxy were flying together again, continuing the disjointed flight around the world, crossing the northern part of the US from near Portland, Oregon, to Portland, Maine. Upon reaching the US east coast, Norman was confronted with the next part of his trip. To reach Europe, he would have to fly north on a path of land masses separated by lengthy stretches of the Atlantic Ocean’s icy waters. As Norman understatedly expressed it, “the significance of the Atlantic was not lost on me.” Yet, off he went. It took three weeks for him to make the Atlantic crossing, including one leg during which he flew “three hundred miles at three hundred feet over Greenland.” To the right Norman shows off the jumpsuit he wore during nearly all legs of his flight, especially ones over water; it's the suit he wears as a lifeboat crewman. Gyroplane Record Attempt The engine, though, was only one concern. Roxy needed new rotor blades and the fuselage needed repairs to patch its holes. Who would have expected that that the airport’s manager was from Germany and a friend of the principal of German-based AutoGyro, a relationship that would help expedite the parts that Roxy needed? A specific challenge was patching the fuselage, which was made of composite material. Few people in Thailand had experience with that material, but as luck would have it, a local man had some closely related knowledge of the material, enough to make sufficient patches. Thailand was an inflection point in more ways than one for Norman. Soon after the accident, still disheartened by it, he was further dismayed to learn that word of the crash had gotten out and another man was embarking on an around-the-world flight in a gyroplane. While grounded in Thailand, Norman followed news of this attempt. Starting from Italy, the challenger was making rapid progress, following the same route Norman had made, and before that, Jones. As Roxy was being repaired, Norman worried that he might soon see the challenger, as he put it, “go screaming by.” Ironically, though, the challenger also crashed, barely two hundred miles from where Norman had tumbled into the lake, that crash ending the challenger’s attempt. Soon, Norman was buoyed by the rapid progress made to restore Roxy, deeply thankful for those who rose to help get what Roxy needed, and for the personal outpouring of online supporters at a time when social media was in its infancy. By August, in a relatively short span of three months, Roxy was restored to a condition that met caa airworthiness requirements. Although its fuselage had different hues of yellow, the inside of the pilot’s compartment bore rough patches, and dried mud clung to crevices in its rear compartment, Roxy was ready to fly. As for Norman, though, perhaps not as much. He described the anticipation of that first flight after the crash as “having to get back on the horse,” but despite his apprehension, he buckled into the front seat and took off. Norman and Roxy were on their way again. FromThailand, Norman hopscotched across stretches of sea separating the scattered land on which he could alight until he reached the Philippines, but by then, it was too late The middle picture to the left shows the emergency raft kept on board in case of a water ditching. The bottom picture shows patches made to the inside of the gyroplane fuselage after the accident in Thailand.
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