12:00PM Sunday, May 24th - Bill Randolph, Flying Around the World In His Homebuilt RV-8

EAA 119 member Bill Randolph recounts his adventure flying his Van's RV-8 around the world.

Bill served in the U.S. Navy during WWII (at age 15-17) 1944 to 1946. He learned to fly in 1946 upon discharge from the Navy and has been an active pilot ever since. He graduated from Oregon State University with a BS Engineering Degree, worked 10 years for IBM , left to help start a new company Memorex Corp. His last job was Director General Memorex SA (Memorex Corp. principal operating subsidiary Europe, based in Liege, Belgium). He left the Corporate world in 1975 to pursue private interests, principally flying and real estate development. In 2004 at the age of 76, he started building an RV-8 and in 2005 flew it around-the-world solo, flew over 27,400+ nautical miles of which 16,000+ was over water, flying 163 hours covering 30 countries on six continents. He was arrested four times, detained and locked-up twice, had an aircraft fire and was intercepted by fighters over the Mediterranean.

Quote : "It simply shows that old geezers can still do a thing or two!"