As reported earlier, on 12 July 2011 at 4:45 pm an expedition on small flex-wing trikes set off from an airfield near Moscow. The expedition is timed to the 75th anniversary of Valery Chkalov’s flight to the Far East. Alexander Scherbakov, head of the TCI’s technical projects, is one of the pilots. Together with the other pilot, Andrey Borisevsky, they follow the route from Moscow to the island of Chkalov on two ultralight trikes whose wings bear the insignia of the official sponsors of the expedition – that is, the Coordination Center for TLD RU/РФ, the Technical Center of Internet and the Moscow Internet Exchange (MSK-IX).
«Basically, the idea was nurtured for long, - says Scherbakov. – I wanted to fly far, the more so that there have already been suchlike endeavors. There have been such flights around the world : from Argentina to South Africa over the glaciers of Greenland. However, Russia has always remained a large uncharted spot, primarily due to the iron curtain. But time flies by, everything changes, and this year Chkalov’s flights turn 75. That’s why an idea dawned on us to make the same flight over Russia. We are taking the same route Valery Chkalov with his crew took on their way home from the island of Chkalov to Moscow, only we are flying in the opposite direction. We plan to end our expedition either in Nikolaevsk-on-Amur or, if very lucky, we’ll manage to get to the city of Magadan. This flight will be a groundbreaking one in Russia. Nobody has ever crossed Russia from the West to the East. We have been gearing up for the flight for long. We took two very serious flight expeditions for 3,000-plus km to the South to the cities of Anapa and Krasnodar. We flew and were getting ready. Our equipment is capable of making 600 km per day, 800 km – at best.”
The pilots took with them all the supplies. They have enough water, food, and engine oil for more than a week’s flight. Plus, the pilots have everything at hand to pitch a camp anywhere along the route just in an hour. Finally, they have trackers, which constantly determine their positioning and transmit information to a satellite, and from the satellite the position, in turn, is relayed onto the Internet. Thanks to the trackers, the pilots’ exact positioning is posted on the Internet with just a 10-minute delay.
At the moment, the pilots have been en route for 7 days. According to their official blog, on the first day they covered 480 km and landed near the city of Nizhniy Novgorod. On 15 July, they reached the city of Kazan and pitched a camp there for 2 days. We will continue tracking down the expedition’s progress.
