Shannon Litz/Nevada Appeal
The 2010 Nevada Day Parade grand marshal had a simple introduction after landing at the Carson City Airport on Friday: "My name is Dick Rutan and I flew around the world."
Rutan, 72, and his wife, Kris, flew to Carson City from their home in Mojave, Calif., in their Berkut, a home-built two-seat plane. They were greeted by parade organizers, fellow pilots and Mayor Bob Crowell near the runway.
Rutan set a world record in 1986 when he and Jeana Yeager flew non-stop without refueling for 26,358 miles around the globe after taking off from Edwards Air Force Base, in California, on Dec. 14, 1984, with about 7,500 pounds of fuel.
Nine days, three minutes and 44 seconds later, they landed the Voyager from where it started with less than a dozen gallons left in the plane, which was designed by Rutan's brother, Burt Rutan.
Rutan's story is being celebrated this year as Nevada marks 100 years of aviation history, which started with another adventurous aviator on June 23, 1910: Ivy Baldwin, the first person to fly in Nevada and at Carson City's elevation.
Rutan, a retired lieutenant colonel with the U.S. Air Force who flew more than 300 combat missions during the Vietnam War, described his experience 24 years ago as tedious: "It's like spending two weeks in a phone booth with somebody you didn't like," he said.
Since the record-setting flight, which still stands today, Rutan has continued to speak about his experience.
"Within six hours of being home we lost both engines, damn near went in the water," Rutan said, adding he still doesn't know how it happened to this day. "I just never got back in there and the next thing I know they were hauling it off to the Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C."
Rutan's theme in the parade will be, "If you can dream it, do it," a motto his brother applied to constructing the Voyager, which had a structural weight of 939 pounds. Children from the Boys & Girls Club will march with Rutan during the parade dressed as the occupations they aspire to.
He said the Voyager project was largely done with the help of volunteers and very few sponsors. It also compromised many standards in modern aviation to make the around-the-globe flight possible.
"Just terrible flying qualities," Rutan said of the plane. "Every one of the systems had to work, if one of them failed, we lost the airplane. So there weren't any backups, there weren't cell phones, no GPS."
He said there was a big fight before taking off on the journey, the issue being an extra 300 pounds of fuel, which Rutan wanted, but his brother did not.
"I didn't want to do this over again," Rutan said. "I'd rather take a chance on not doing it over again. As it turns out I could have put another 300 pounds of fuel onboard."
Parade day begins with a
7 a.m. hot air balloon launch in front of the old Gottschalks on South Carson Street.
There will be a fly-over of F-18 Hornets and an F-16 Falcon from Fallon Naval Air Station and a Lockheed C-130 Hercules transport from the Nevada Air Guard above Carson Street at 10 a.m., which signals the beginning of the Nevada Day Parade.
The parade route begins at the intersection of William and Carson streets and ends at the intersection of Stewart and Carson streets.