As the only approved IFR-capable MD 500E in the world, N5144Q is no ordinary MD 500E helicopter. To stand a chance of bettering Ron Bower’s solo 1994 round-the-world-in-a-helicopter record, Simon Oliphant-Hope needed to have it back in the UK. The managing director of Eastern Atlantic Helicopters located N5144Q in California and brought it back to his home airfield, at Shoreham on England’s south coast. A team of five engineers and an avionics technician, led by Simon Gibson, worked on it for five weeks, preparing it for the start of a global odyssey at the beginning of June.
They fitted the aircraft with a three-axis autopilot, two batteries, dual heated pitot tubes, satellite phone (wired into the intercom) with e-mail capability and standby IFR instruments. For navigation, Oliphant-Hope would depend on a Garmin GNS 430/530 navcom offering IFR GPS, VOR, localizer and glideslope with color moving map. The Garmin was linked to the autopilot and augmented with a beefed-up memory card for world coverage. For topographical detail of the route Oliphant-Hope used a Skyforce Skymap 3C, switching from a European to a U.S. card and back again as the journey progressed.
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