Antonovs over the Arctic : Flying to the North Pole in Russian Biplanes - Hardcover

Anderson, Robert Mads

9781869534196: Antonovs over the Arctic : Flying to the North Pole in Russian Biplanes

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1869534190 ISBN 13: 9781869534196

Publisher: David Bateman, 1998

Seventy years later a team of six explorers set out in a pair of 1947 design biplanes, the Antonov An-2, to recreate that historic journey.

The story takes us beyond the challenges of the North to explore remote islands in Canad's Northwest Territory, Greenland and Norway, where polar bears, musk oxen and wolves roam freely. The men, from Shane Lundgren, who is the youngest person to qualify as a 737 jet pilot, to Ron Sheardown, a bush pilot who has spent thousands of hours flying in the high Arctic, take us along on an adventourous journey over the top of the world.

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From the Inside Flap:

In the spring of 1928, two men in a single-engine plane took off from the northernmost point in America - Barrow, Alaska. Flying for over 20 hours across the Arctic, they completed a journey to Spitsbergen, Norway, described by their contemporaries Byrd and Amundsen as 'the most remarkable journey yet made.'
Seventy years later a team of six explorers set out in a pair of 1947 design Russian biplanes, the Antonov An-2, to recreate that historic journey.
The original flight by George Wilkins and Ben Eielson face the challenges of the Arctic, battling temperatures far below zero degrees Fahrenheit , dense sea fog and planes heavily loaded with highly flammable fuel. Yet even with the advent of modern navigational aids such as the GPS, the problems faced by the 1998 expedition often seemed to be the ones that have always challenged great explorers: building a team, confronting the unknown and probing the depths of human potential.
The story takes us beyond the challenges of the North to explore remote islands in Canada's Northwest Territory, Greenland and Norway where polar bears, musk oxen and wolves roam freely. The team of men, from Shane Lundgren, who is the youngest person to qualify as a pilot on a B737 jetliner, to Ron Sheardown, a bush pilot who has spent thousands of hour flying in the high Arctic conducting mining exploration, take us along on their airborne adventure over the top of the world.

About the Author:

Robert Mads Anderson, a native of Colorado where he first became interested in the mountains and wider exploration, has written two other books, Seven Summits Solo and To Everest via Antarctica, about his climbs on the Seven Summits. He took to the air after meeting Shane Lundgren and being introduced to the joys of flight aboard the Antonov in 1995. He left America for Europe, the UK, New Zealand and Korea, before moving to his home in New York, NY, where he lives with his wife and two children.

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