Weltflug.tv – The

Gyrocopter An autogyro (from Greek and , "self-turning"), also known as a ''gyroplane'', is a type of rotorcraft that uses an unpowered rotor in free autorotation to develop lift. Forward thrust is provided independently, by an engine-driven propeller. Wh ...

World Tour is the title of a five-part documentary series by Melanie & Andreas Stuetz and of "Weltflug – Two high-flyers on five continents" by Andreas Stuetz.

Content

Blu-ray The Blu-ray Disc (BD), often known simply as Blu-ray, is a digital optical disc data storage format. It was invented and developed in 2005 and released on June 20, 2006 worldwide. It is designed to supersede the DVD format, and capable of st ...

, DVD and book document the flight that started in April 2009 by Melanie and Andreas Stuetz and led in 18 months and 100,000 miles of travel around the world. Highlights of the route were: The Way of St. James (Europe), the

Okavango Delta The Okavango Delta (or Okavango Grassland; formerly spelled "Okovango" or "Okovanggo") in Botswana is a swampy inland delta formed where the Okavango River reaches a tectonic trough at an altitude of 930–1,000 m in the central part of the en ...

, the

Kalahari The Kalahari Desert is a large semi-arid sandy savanna in Southern Africa extending for , covering much of Botswana, and parts of Namibia and South Africa. It is not to be confused with the Angolan, Namibian, and South African Namib coasta ...

and the

Namib The Namib ( ; pt, Namibe) is a coastal desert in Southern Africa. The name is of Khoekhoegowab origin and means "vast place". According to the broadest definition, the Namib stretches for more than along the Atlantic coasts of Angola, Nami ...

Desert (South Africa, Botswana, Namibia), the Outback and the

Tasman Sea The Tasman Sea ( Māori: ''Te Tai-o-Rēhua'', ) is a marginal sea of the South Pacific Ocean, situated between Australia and New Zealand. It measures about across and about from north to south. The sea was named after the Dutch explorer ...

(Australia),

Tauranga Tauranga () is a coastal city in the Bay of Plenty region and the fifth most populous city of New Zealand, with an urban population of , or roughly 3% of the national population. It was settled by Māori late in the 13th century, colonised by ...

via

Wellington Wellington ( mi, Te Whanganui-a-Tara or ) is the capital city of New Zealand. It is located at the south-western tip of the North Island, between Cook Strait and the Remutaka Range. Wellington is the second-largest city in New Zealand by metr ...

Queenstown, New Zealand Queenstown ( mi, Tāhuna) is a resort town in Otago in the south-west of New Zealand's South Island. It has an urban population of The town is built around an inlet called Queenstown Bay on Lake Wakatipu, a long, thin, Z-shaped lake forme ...

Seattle Seattle ( ) is a seaport city on the West Coast of the United States. It is the seat of King County, Washington. With a 2020 population of 737,015, it is the largest city in both the state of Washington and the Pacific Northwest regio ...

over San Francisco to Los Angeles (USA),

Buenos Aires Buenos Aires ( or ; ), officially the Autonomous City of Buenos Aires ( es, link=no, Ciudad Autónoma de Buenos Aires), is the capital and primate city of Argentina. The city is located on the western shore of the Río de la Plata, on South ...

over

Iguazu Falls Iguazú Falls or Iguaçu Falls ( gn, Chororõ Yguasu , es, Cataratas del Iguazú, links=no ; pt, Cataratas do Iguaçu ) are waterfalls of the Iguazu River on the border of the Argentine province of Misiones and the Brazilian state of Paraná ...

Rio de Janeiro Rio de Janeiro ( , , ; literally 'River of January'), or simply Rio, is the capital of the state of the same name, Brazil's third-most populous state, and the second-most populous city in Brazil, after São Paulo. Listed by the GaWC as a ...

(South America). The idea for the real adventure comes from the book " Robbi, Tobbi und das Fliewatüüt" of

Boy Lornsen Boy Lornsen (7 August 1922 – 26 July 1995) was a German sculptor and author of children's literature, writing both in Standard German and in Platt. Lornsen served as pilot and radio operator in the German Luftwaffe during World War II. Aft ...

, a famous children's author. Melanie dreamed as a little girl in the GDR about boundless travel. Andreas devoured as a young boy in West Germany, the children's TV series " Robbi, Tobbi und das Fliewatüüt". His childhood dream was to be like Tobbi make a trip around the world with a vehicle that flies ("Flie"), lands on water ("wa") and drives like a car ("tuut). Later in the

James Bond The ''James Bond'' series focuses on a fictional British Secret Service agent created in 1953 by writer Ian Fleming, who featured him in twelve novels and two short-story collections. Since Fleming's death in 1964, eight other authors have ...

film " You Only Live Twice", the couple saw a plane similar to the Fliewatüüt. Sean Connery triumphed in Japan with a kind of bonsai helicopter, called gyrocopter or autogyro "Little Nellie", against four combat helicopters. The autogyro looked indeed like a small helicopter, but started and landed like an airplane. Still before they have kids and would support their dreams, Melanie and Andreas learned to fly. They acquired their own autogyro and launched the first World Tour with a gyrocopter at all, with stages in Europe, Africa, Australia & New Zealand, the USA and South America. Until they had started this project with an autogyro, a microlight sport vehicle built for short range, it was believed to be an impossible undertaking. Melanie and Andreas used the travel to support and draw attention to the work of the children's charity

Terre des hommes Terre des hommes, also Terre des Hommes (''Land of People'' or ''Land of Men''), is an international children's rights charitable humanitarian umbrella organization under the aegis of the International Federation of Terre des Hommes (TDHIF), wit ...

. They visited children in projects of Terre des Hommes in South Africa, India, Thailand, Peru and Bolivia, and asked children and adults about their childhood dreams. The couple met in the interviews with the caregivers and the children and learned that childhood dreams can be an important key for the development in life. Children who pursue a dream for their lives, have a strong motivation to overcome opposition and adversity. With the realization of their world tour Melanie and Andreas encourage children and adults across borders to pursue their dreams. A portion of proceeds from the book and movie will go directly to help the children of Terre des Hommes.

Filming

Melanie and Andreas Stuetz were equipped with two HD cameras. With the cameras they filmed both the flying scenes in the cockpit but were also filmed from the ground and during the flight from other aircraft.

DVD / Blu-ray

The DVD – and Blu-ray edition appeared 2012. On five DVDs and Blu-rays five episodes are included. The individual episodes are titled and describe the following travel sections * Episode 1: Europe * Episode 2: Africa * Episode 3: Australia & New Zealand * Episode 4: USA * Episode 5: South America The footage was dubbed in German and English. Subtitles in German and English. The German TV stations ARD (broadcaster),

ZDF ZDF (, short for Zweites Deutsches Fernsehen; ; "Second German Television") is a German public-service television broadcaster based in Mainz, Rhineland-Palatinate. It is run as an independent nonprofit institution, which was founded by all fe ...

and

RTL Television RTL (from '), formerly RTL plus and RTL Television, is a German-language free-to-air television channel owned by the RTL Group, headquartered in Cologne. Founded as an offshoot of the German-language radio programme '' ,'' RTL is consider ...

showed parts of Weltflug.tv footage in the editorial coverage of the adventure.

Autogyro

Andreas and Melanie flew initially a gyroplane type of Xenon Celier Aviation. After passing the Europe and Africa Adventure the German market leader for gyroplanes, the company AutoGyro from Hildesheim decided to support the adventure with MTOsport gyroplanes in Australia, New Zealand, the USA and South America.

Challenges

Europe

In France, they saved themselves with a dramatic flight during a storm just into a strictly forbidden military restriction zone. When they tried to cross the Pyrenees between France and Spain, they threatened to crash into a cloud-covered massif. At the last moment a gap opened in the clouds and they were able to fly over the mountains. On the Atlantic coast, they barely escaped a storm system in which they were trapped.

Africa

Shortly before the start of the flight in Africa the Gyroplane was badly damaged by another pilot at an air show. For the repair was not enough time. The adventure seemed to be abruptly ended before it even had begun. Two South African pilots offered them to take them on the tour. Now with two camera angles, it became a breathtaking low level flight over the fantastic

wildlife of Africa The fauna of Africa, in its broader sense, is all the animals living in Africa and its surrounding seas and islands. The more characteristic African fauna is found in the Afrotropical realm. Lying almost entirely within the tropics, and equally to ...

, across elephants, zebra and water buffalo herds. An explosion of colors opened to them from above, with the lush green of the

, the snow white of the

Makgadikgadi The Makgadikgadi Pan (Tswana pronunciation ), a salt pan situated in the middle of the dry savanna of north-eastern Botswana, is one of the largest salt flats in the world. The pan is all that remains of the formerly enormous Lake Makgadikg ...

salt lakes, stretching out to the horizon waving golden elephant grass and the fiery red of the highest sand dunes in the world, of

Sossusvlei Sossusvlei (sometimes written Sossus Vlei) is a salt and clay pan surrounded by high red dunes, located in the southern part of the Namib Desert, in the Namib-Naukluft National Park of Namibia. The name "Sossusvlei" is often used in an exten ...

. When Melanie and Andreas were forced to land on a gravel road in the Namib Desert, a special force of the Namibian military was alerted. Within 15 minutes, the two found themselves surrounded by numerous armed guards. Two hours prior to the end the prerotator shaft of the rotor broke. They could prerotate the rotor by hand and made it to the final destination Springs in Johannesburg.

Australia and New Zealand

The rejection of the European Medical certificate and the lack of insurance of the gyroplane seemed to let fail the adventure for weeks. During this time they lived in a small disused caravan in the middle of the Australian bush. In close proximity with

kangaroos Kangaroos are four marsupials from the family Macropodidae (macropods, meaning "large foot"). In common use the term is used to describe the largest species from this family, the red kangaroo, as well as the antilopine kangaroo, eastern gre ...

koalas The koala or, inaccurately, koala bear (''Phascolarctos cinereus''), is an arboreal herbivorous marsupial native to Australia. It is the only extant representative of the family Phascolarctidae and its closest living relatives are the womb ...

and

cockatoos A cockatoo is any of the 21 parrot species belonging to the family Cacatuidae, the only family in the superfamily Cacatuoidea. Along with the Psittacoidea (true parrots) and the Strigopoidea (large New Zealand parrots), they make up the ord ...

they experienced their Australian Dreamtime. They managed to solve formal problems and finally took off. The flight went through the

eucalyptus ''Eucalyptus'' () is a genus of over seven hundred species of flowering trees, shrubs or mallees in the myrtle family, Myrtaceae. Along with several other genera in the tribe Eucalypteae, including '' Corymbia'', they are commonly known as e ...

forests across the Dividing Range from the east coast and then flying low directly above the pounding surf along the coast towards Cairns . Because of an approaching cyclone, the two finally were stopped by storms and heavy rain on the coast and could only continue their trip in New Zealand. There the pilot couple flew in a formation with five local gyroplanes and 60 others, some unique historic aircraft at the "New Zealand Air Safari". Over 5,000 kilometers their autogyro tour took them in the north, then to the extreme south of "

The Lord of the Rings ''The Lord of the Rings'' is an epic high-fantasy novel by English author and scholar J. R. R. Tolkien. Set in Middle-earth, intended to be Earth at some time in the distant past, the story began as a sequel to Tolkien's 1937 children's b ...

" islands and back. In their approach to the international airport

they temporarily lost control of the autogyro in heavy turbulence. The autogyro reared up like a rowing boat in rough seas. Despite the extreme conditions they kept their nerve and landed safely in the capital of New Zealand. To get from the North to the South Island, they had to fly over the

Cook Strait Cook Strait ( mi, Te Moana-o-Raukawa) separates the North and South Islands of New Zealand. The strait connects the Tasman Sea on the northwest with the South Pacific Ocean on the southeast. It is wide at its narrowest point,McLintock, A ...

, 30 kilometers travel across open sea. In one of the last landing at Omaka New Zealand a squall tilted the autogyro.

United States

In a dramatic bad weather flight they managed to get through the foothills of the Cascades to the Pacific coast, at Gold Beach. They followed the coastline of Oregon southward to the Golden Gate Bridge of San Francisco in California. The airport

Half Moon Bay Half Moon Bay is a coastal city in San Mateo County, California, United States, approximately south of San Francisco. Its population was 11,795 as of the 2020 census. Immediately at the north of Half Moon Bay is Pillar Point Harbor and the un ...

near San Francisco, was completely covered with clouds. In their type of aircraft you lose orientation and control of the aircraft in clouds within seconds. However, they had hardly any fuel left and alternative airfields were no longer within reach. So they decided to do a bold approach to the airfield of Half Moon Bay, which was completely under clouds. In San Francisco, they met with Karl-Heinz Johannsmeier, who had made it from a Stasi prisoner in East Germany to a multi-millionaire in the United States. After they had interviewed him at his estate about his success and his dreams, they continued their adventures. They flew over the dream factory Hollywood to their destination near Los Angeles.

South America

After visiting seven different authorities in

and with a personal letter from the President of the Argentine Civil Aviation Authority Melanie and Andreas succeeded to create the preconditions for a launch in Argentina. A mature 70-year-old scrap truck transported the autogyro to the airport and promptly got stuck in the mud just before reaching the hangar. In a complex operation the truck dinosaur could be freed with an additional four-wheel drive SUV and a tractor. The sport pilots took off and eventually flew along the Río Uruguay. Due to a singularity of the earth magnetic field both compass and the

GPS The Global Positioning System (GPS), originally Navstar GPS, is a satellite-based radionavigation system owned by the United States government and operated by the United States Space Force. It is one of the global navigation satellite sy ...

were disturbed and they temporarily lost orientation during the flight. They made it yet to the Iguazú Falls and filmed the largest waterfalls in the world, both from the air and from the ground. On their connecting flight, they were caught in a storm over the jungle, but reached the coast of the South Atlantic in Brazil. On the last leg of their Weltflug adventure, the couple flew over the beaches of

Copacabana (Rio de Janeiro) Copacabana () is a ''bairro'' (neighbourhood) located in the South Zone of the city of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. It is most prominently known for its 4 km (2.5 miles) balneario beach, which is one of the most famous in the w ...

and

Ipanema Ipanema () is a neighbourhood located in the South Zone of the city of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, between Leblon and Arpoador. The beach at Ipanema became known internationally with the popularity of the bossa nova jazz song, "The Girl from Ipa ...

. Five times they circled around the

Christ the Redeemer (statue) ''Christ the Redeemer'' ( pt, Cristo Redentor, standard , ) is an Art Deco statue of Jesus Christ in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, created by French sculptor Paul Landowski and built by Brazilian engineer Heitor da Silva Costa, in collaboration wit ...

statue of

, at the same time the climax and conclusion of the two-year adventure.

External links

Official Website

Weltflug.tv Filmtrailer Vimeo

Weltflug.tv Filmtrailer Youtube
* Andreas G. Stuetz: ''Book WELTFLUG – The Gyroplane Dream'', cross-frontier, Munich 2013, . * Melanie & Andreas Stuetz: ''DVD Weltflug.tv 1 – Europe'' (The World Tour by Gyroplane) cross-frontier, BDF, Munich/Cologne 2012, . * Melanie & Andreas Stuetz: ''DVD Weltflug.tv 2 – Africa'' (The World Tour by Gyroplane) cross-frontier, Munich 2012, . * Melanie & Andreas Stuetz: ''DVD Weltflug.tv 3 – Australia & New Zealand'' (The World Tour by Gyroplane) cross-frontier, Munich 2012, . * Melanie & Andreas Stuetz: ''DVD Weltflug.tv 4 – USA'' (The World Tour by Gyroplane) cross-frontier, Munich 2012, . * Melanie & Andreas Stuetz: ''DVD Weltflug.tv 5 – South America'' (The World Tour by Gyroplane) cross-frontier, Munich 2012, . * Melanie & Andreas Stuetz: ''Blu-ray Weltflug.tv 1 – Europe'' (The World Tour by Gyroplane) cross-frontier, BDF, Munich/Cologne 2012, . * Melanie & Andreas Stuetz: ''Blu-ray Weltflug.tv 2 – Africa'' (The World Tour by Gyroplane) cross-frontier, Munich 2012, . * Melanie & Andreas Stuetz: ''Blu-ray Weltflug.tv 3 – Australia & New Zealand'' (The World Tour by Gyroplane) cross-frontier, Munich 2012, . * Melanie & Andreas Stuetz: ''Blu-ray Weltflug.tv 4 – USA'' (The World Tour by Gyroplane) cross-frontier, Munich 2012, . * Melanie & Andreas Stuetz: ''Blu-ray Weltflug.tv 5 – South America'' (The World Tour by Gyroplane) cross-frontier, Munich 2012, .

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Weltflug.tv - The Gyrocopter World Tour Documentary film series Documentary television series about aviation German documentary television series