Fliers meet

Press, 26 November 1980, Page 1

Fliers meet

Jean Batten greets Judith Chisholm on her arrival at Auckland Airport yesterday. The 28-year-old British pilot arrived last evening to be greeted by the pioneer aviatrix, now aged 70, whose' flight record had just been broken. Miss Chisholm made the flight in 157 hours, 30 minutes, breaking Miss Batten’s single-handed record of 11 days 45 minutes, set in 1936, by 4 days, 11 hours 15 minutes. “I’m glad I didn’t do it ■in 1936,” Judith Chisholm told the older woman. Jean Batten told reporters: “I flew out 16 years before she was born, in a wood-and-canvas outfit. I .feel • very flattered that somebody would spend $65,000 to beat my record.”

Jean Batten was in Australia as a guest speaker at Qantas’s sixtieth

anniversary celebrations, and the airline decided to fly her to New Zealand to meet Judith Chisholm. Food on Miss Chisholm’s trip consisted of sandwiches in the early stages, but-reducing to mouldy toffees later. She drank water and coffee and had a “sophisticated arrangement to go to the loo.” Lack of sleep was a problem heading into Colombo, Miss Chisholm said. She had been awake for 55 hours and flying for 48 hours. “My vision was beginning to go,” she said. “I had to concentrate very hard.”

She also hit a bad tropical thunderstorm just off Jakarta. “I was thrown 2000 ft up and down again, and struck by lightning. I felt very glad I was not Jean Batten.” Miss Chisholm later headed for Hamilton, where she will rest and the Cessna will be serviced. She then intends to break more records on her way back to Britain via Pago Pago, Hawaii, San Francisco, and Winnipeg, and will then return to her job flying corporate jets. Why did she do it? “Because I enjoyed

doing it, and because New Zealanders had had the record for so long.” The Percival Vega Gull used .by Jean Batten in her epic flight from Britain to New Zealand 44 years ago, and the .Cessna Turbo-Centurion used by Judith Chisholm have .very little in common. Jean Batten, after seeing the Cessna, said that there was no comparison. The Cessna has highly sophisticated avionics equipment, as well as an $BO,OOO computer. The Gull had no radio, and certainly no computer. “Just my brain,” said Jean Batten. A 200 h.p. de Havilland Gipsy Six engine powered the low-winged Gull monoplane, while the high-winged Cessna is powered by a 285 h.p. Continental TSIO-520-H turbocharged engine.