Eurobond Adhesives Ltd has announced that it is sponsoring Zara Rutherford in her attempt to become the youngest female pilot to fly solo around the world, at 19 years old. Additionally, Rutherford has only held her private pilot’s licence for under two years, qualifying at the age of 17.
Rutherford is set to take off from Kortrijk airfield in Belgium in her 2-seat Shark microlight aircraft at 10:30am on the 18 August. Her aim is to “inspire young people, in particular girls, to engage in science, technology, engineering and maths (STEM) subjects at school and to motivate them to enter into technical or scientific careers”.
The aircraft selected to carry her safely around the globe is a Shark UL, a cutting-edge example of the most modern high-performance two seat tandem ultralight aircraft. It features retractable undercarriage and a smaller, high-efficiency wing design together with a variable-pitch propeller and a high tech cockpit interior.
The aircraft is designed and constructed using the most advanced carbon fibre epoxy composite technology and incorporates many light-weighting design features such as the use of adhesive bonding to replace mechanical fixings.
The aircraft is powered by a ROTAX 912 ULS 100 hp engine delivering a cruising speed of 140 knots and a range of around 1,600 km. She will visit 52 countries spanning 5 continents and will take around 3 months to complete her record breaking attempt.
Simon Dearing, Eurobond Adhesives’ Managing Director, said: “Zara is a truly remarkable and courageous young woman and is a great role model, especially so for other young women. Our business shares much in common with Zara: embracing cutting edge technology, pushing boundaries and challenging science – in our case to produce some of the best high performance bonding solutions and most advanced dispensing equipment. 70% of the Eurobond workforce is female and everyone here will be following her world record attempt with a keen eye. We wish her a safe and successful trip!”
Rutherford’s progress can be followed by watching updates on the news pages of the Eurobond Adhesives website www.eurobond-adhesives.co.uk/news or at the Eurobond Facebook page @eurobondadhesives.
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