Sheila Scott
From Women Aviators
Sheila Scott (April 27, 1927 – October 20, 1988), was an English aviator.
She was born Sheila Christine Hopkins in Worcester, Worcestershire, England, and educated at the Alice Ottley School.
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Aviation Ratings
Sheila was rated for Comercial, helicopter, and sea plane.
In her career, she broke over 100 aviation records through her long distance flight endeavours, which included a 34,000 mile (54,400 km) "world and a half" flight in 1971. On this flight, she became the first person to fly over the North Pole in a single engine aircraft.
Round the World Flights
Sheila made three round the world flights, total.
For the first two, she flew a Piper Comanche 260, named the Myth Too. Its registration was G-ATOY, its engine was a Lycoming 260 CV, and it was a metallic, low wing, tricycle gear. She made the first fight in 1966, the second in 1969.
For the third flight, in 1970-1971, she left from Nairobi.
NASA
Sheila, age 39, flew this 1971 trip in her Piper Aztec "Mythre." She carried special NASA equipment for a communications experiment, testing the Interrogation Recording and Location System (IRLS) of the Nimbus polar orbiting satellite. The IRLS equipment, a Balloon Interrogation package, transmitted data on Scott's location during the 34,000- mile around the world flight to the Nimbus satellite, which relayed it to NASA's ground station at Fairbanks, Alaska and then to a computer center in Greenbelt, Maryland.
Sheila Scott's record-making, historic flight confirmed the satellite's ability to collect location data from remote computerized and human-operated stations with a unique "mobile platform" location test.
Books
Sheila had two books published:
I Must Fly. Adventures of a Woman Pilot, 1968 , Hodder and Stoughton. The beginning of Sheila Scott flying and her first flight around the World.Photos and maps.
Barefoot in the Sky. 1973, Macmillan, New York. Sheila Scott describes her three flights around the World and her many records. Photo and maps
Organizations
Sheila also served as governor of the British section of the Ninety-Nines.
Death
Sheila died in 1988 as a result of lung cancer. She was only 61.
References
- Solo Flights Solo Flights of Sheila Scott
