Tickets: R100 per person (price not finalised yet). First come first served. Contact Russell to book: russelvb@absa.co.za

Quote Aero Club membership number (if applicable)

 

MICHAEL W. MELVILL is

 

·                Vice President/General Manager and a Test Pilot and one of 10 owners of Scaled Composites, LLC in Mojave, California.

·                He has worked for Burt Rutan for 26 years, and has 21 years of experience as an experimental test pilot.

·                He holds an FAA Commercial pilot’s certificate, ASEL, AMEL, instrument airplane, Rotorcraft-helicopter and Glider.

·                He recently became the first commercial Astronaut, after flying SpaceShipOne to above 100 km on June 21st 1004.

·                He has accumulated 7000 flight hours in 123 fixed wing-types, and 11 rotary wing types.

·                He is a Fellow of the Society of Experimental Test Pilots.

·                He has been a member of AOPA for 35 years.

·                He has been a member of the Experimental Aircraft Association for 31 years.

·                He was awarded the Ivan C. Kincheloe trophy in 1999 by the SETP for high altitude, developmental flight-testing of the model 281 Proteus aircraft. He was awarded his second Ivan C. Kincheloe trophy at this year’s annual SETP Symposium for his work flight-testing SpaceShipOne.

·                He holds five World and National speed and altitude records in Rutan’s Catbird, Proteus and SpaceShipOne aircraft.

·                He has flown 10 FIRST flights of Burt Rutan’s aircraft designs, including Burt’s latest, the SpaceShipOne.

·                He built his own Variviggen and Long-EZ homebuilt aircraft.

·                He and Dick Rutan flew their Long-EZ’s around the world in 1997

·                He is a native of South Africa.