Trike Globetrotter
On Monday 14 June 2021, I met up with Andreas Zmuda and his partner Doreen Kröeber at Tedderfield to hear about their incredible nomadic flying experiences around the world.
Andreas and Doreen describe themselves as ‘bird free – a life as a flying nomad’. The two extreme adventurers report informatively, most entertainingly and with a lot of humour about their unique experiences and encounters from the nine years of their trip in what they call the ‘motorcycle of the air’ and about their lives that has become a philosophy of life.
Anyone who watches Andreas Zmuda’s life will become dizzy. He has lived adventure for many years and was at home in Central and South America for a long time. His new partner Doreen lets him settle down, but only for a short time, until both extreme adventurers gave up their home in Berlin in the summer of 2012, sold everything and set off into the unknown without much planning. The journey took them on a 160,000 km long world record flight through 101 countries over the years to discover the world from above and meet people whose clocks tick very differently.
After the two extreme adventurers have flown across North, South and Central America and the dreamy island worlds of the Caribbean, Florida and New York (with a spectacular flight around the Statue of Liberty and the skyscrapers of Manhattan), they arrived on the European continent. Their flight took them from Belgium, Luxembourg, Germany, Switzerland, Holland, Denmark to Sweden and further via Norway and Finland, as well as Estonia to Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Austria, Slovenia, Italy, France and Spain Portugal. Earlier this year they made a start on their African adventure that they expect to take two to three years traversing the continent from south to north.
Due to the COVID-19 pandemic their modified Trike Microlight was shipped in a container to South Africa. The couple arrived in Cape Town earlier this year and Andraes immediately set about trying to obtain an ‘Authority to Fly’ (ATF) document for the South African Civil Aviation Authority (SACAA), but he received no answers from the regulator.
Once the Trike arrived, they set about re-assembling the aircraft at Morningstar airfield outside Cape Town. Due to the fact that it took the South African regulator a further 46 days to issue a simple ATF document the couple decided to tour the Garden Route and the Western Cape.
Andreas told me that of the 56 countries they had already visited obtaining an ATF took a maximum of 48 hours, but effectively the South African regulator took in the region of 66 days, because he started the application well before his Trike arrived. In fact, he said that almost everywhere they had travelled the regulators were intrigued with their adventures and were most friendly with assistance.
However, once the ATF came through, the couple started on their South African adventure where they met the friendliest aviation people who loved to make them feel welcome. The Trike has now been dismantled and is stored at Tedderfield until they return to South Africa in December this year to continue their African adventure.
How they met
Andreas and Doreen met in November 2010 during an Amazon expedition through Peru, Bolivia and Brazil. Andreas was the expedition leader and Doreen was one of the tourists. From the day they met she combined her deep love and passion for all kinds of adventures, good food, wine and the fascination of flying around the earth in an open plane. Andreas was a little over 50 years ago as an only child in West Berlin and he says he ‘muddled’ through life as best he could as an electrician, gardener, house builder, insurance agent, football coach, founder of the first Berlin construction site breakfast service and much more. From the age of 15 he travelled all over Europe with a backpack before he emigrated to Venezuela in the early 1990s to spend a few months completely isolated from any civilization with a native Indian tribe in the vast jungles of Venezuela and English Guyana. During his trip he had wonderful encounters with these fascinating people and deep insights into their culture, traditions and way of life, as well as the South American flora and fauna.
He became acquainted with the Spanish language and obtained his pilot’s license at the same time before he decided to settle first in Venezuela and later in Colombia, Ecuador, Belize, the Bahamas and most of the time on the Caribbean Robinson Island Tobago and to enjoy life to the fullest. In South and Central America for the past 22 years he worked as a tour guide organizer of adventurous tours and jungle expeditions until he met his Doreen on the Amazon expedition, which motivated him to return to Europe, well at least for a few months. His greatest hobby was to enjoy his life, with many of outdoor activities, good wine and food, as well as adventurous trips around the world. His passion ‘to take to the air’ with everything that has wings, he will be able to ‘let off steam’ for the next few years.
Doreen was born a little over 40 years ago in Halle (Saale), a city in the former GDR. Growing up as an only child in a very loving family, she went to a Berlin sports school in her early teenage days to further promote her speed skating talent. After successfully completing her degree as an industrial engineer, her professional passion was the implementation of construction projects. Until the start of their expedition, she worked in a responsible position in the construction of the new metropolitan airport Berlin - Brandenburg (BER). Her hobbies are all kinds of outdoor activities, photography, good wine and stylish food, as well as adventurous trips around the world. From June 2012 her full attention was devoted to implementing the joint flight project. She quit her great job to take off together with Andreas and discover the world from a completely new perspective.
The flight plan
Sometime in winter 2011 / 2012 Doreen and Andreas were sitting on the cosy, red sofa in their apartment (a former Stasi prison) in Berlin-Rummelsburg with a bottle of good wine and thinking about where to go on vacation in 2012. The following future-oriented conversation quickly developed out of nowhere:
“Okay, no problem, but then forget about the motorhome and take a break of three months.” “Great, I will tell my employer about that! But you have also lived in Colombia, Venezuela, Ecuador and some Caribbean islands. We should go there right away!”
Hey, why don’t we buy a small trike, a trailer and a used, small motorhome in the USA and then drive to the USA for three weeks in the summer and fly over San Francisco, Florida, the Grand Canyon. “Great idea” replied Doreen, “but why don’t we fly on to Belize, where you lived for a few years?
“Well, then take a year off and we will explore the entire American continent, the Caribbean and then I will fly the thing across the pond to Germany.”
“Great, but to fly very low over the elephants in Africa, that would be my absolute dream, what do you think?” Enthused Doreen. Then I replied: “Great, but then let us get it done. You quit your job, we sell everything and fly from Africa to Asia and Australia and make the world tour round. In three to four years, we should reach our destination Sydney in Australia!”
When Andreas emigrated to Venezuela in 1992, he lived for seven months with the Pemon and Kamaratoco Indians in the middle of the jungle of the famous table mountains, where he met Jose Manuel Ugarte, the adopted child of the great explorer James Crawford Angel Marshall, better known as Jimmy Angel. Since then, Andreas has dreamed of flying his own plane to these magical mountains of Venezuela once in his life and then, almost 80 years after Jimmy Angel’s landing on the Auyan Tepui, to look for gold and diamonds again. His dream will come true in March 2013 during the ‘Trike-Globetrotter’ expedition.
After Andreas later the reports of the pioneers of trike flying like Brian Milton, who flew the first around the whole world, Guy Delage (also in a DTA trike), who flew across the Atlantic from Africa to Brazil, Dave Sykes, the British Paraplegic pilot who flew solo from England to Sydney, Ricky de Agrela, Alan Honeyborne and Martin Warner with their still current world record flight of over 40,000 miles and two tragic deaths, Richard MeredithHardy’s London-Sydney expedition, Mark Jackson’s flight over Mount Everest, Mike Blyth and Olivier Aubert flight adventures in Africa, Europe and South America including an Atlantic crossing over Greenland. Andreas wanted to experience his own ‘trike’ and his own adventures on all five continents.
Andreas made his first flight attempts in the ‘Good Hope Flying School’ in Cape Town, South Africa and in Port of Spain in Trinidad & Tobago on Cessnas and Pipers. But after he discovered his love for this ‘crazy vehicle’ in an airborne trike with his dentist (who immediately gave him a new ceramic denture between the flights) in Ecuador, he immediately made his SPL (sports pilot license) and later his PPL (pilot license) in Zephyrhills, Florida, USA.
His first own trike was a trike known as the ‘flying rubber dinghy’ that Andreas used to fly locals and tourists around the Mayan ruins in Belize.The FIB was patented by Polaris Motor SRL, the first Italian manufacturer of gliders and microlights, in 1986. Since 1987 more than 1000 units have been flown all over the world (Indonesia, Thailand, Malaysia, Turkey, Red Sea, Argentina, Madagascar, USA etc.). The Navy Seals of Singapore use the FIB for special missions. Green Peace has two FIBs and used them during the French nuclear test.
Not sure whether a trike or a gyrocopter is the right vehicle for his flying adventures, Andreas travelled to Australia for a few weeks to take a few flying lessons with his friend and flight instructor Don Cramer in Dalby. But Andreas loves a beautiful wing and no rotor blades.
South Africa 2021
“We have been flying here in beautiful South Africa for a few weeks now and we’re enjoying it so much! What a feeling of freedom after all the COVID restrictions! We flew the route Morningstar (Cape Town), Kersfortein, Saldanha, Vredendal, Kleinzee, Klein Pella, Dundi / Augrabies, Thuru Lodge and Douglas Backhouse. Two pilots invited us to land on Romance Farm (north of Kimberley) and Palmietfontein (near Bothaville) and spend a few days there before we flew to meet up with Mike Blyth at Tedderfield Airpark. Everywhere we met extremely friendly people who helped us with a comfortable bed, good food and wonderful wine and mostly with a hangar. Thanks, so much aviation friends.”
On 16 June after dismantling the trike, the couple returned via commercial airline to Germany. The plan is that they will return in mid-December this year to continue their journey through Africa.