{"type":"rich","version":"1.0","provider_name":"Transistor","provider_url":"https://transistor.fm","author_name":"Pilot to Pilot","title":"I flew around the world and built a plane w/ JP Schulze E368","html":"","width":"100%","height":180,"duration":5505,"description":"In 1999, a handful of people gathered at a dusty Namibian airfield to meet two men flying weight-shift microlights around the world. One of them was Mike Blyth. Watching from the crowd was a boy who had never left the country, whose family couldn't afford much flying, and who had no real concept of where these men had come from — only that whatever they were doing, he wanted to do it too.\nTwenty-five years later, JP Schulze has flown around the world himself, built the first Sling High Wing off the line — designed by the same Mike Blyth — and become one of the most distinctive filmmakers in aviation.\nThis one took a while to make happen. We finally met at Oshkosh this year, and JP is candid about being a naturally shy person who ended up with a career in front of a camera.\nHe grew up in Namibia with no art classes and no creative outlets, thinking in German and Afrikaans, teaching himself English from the Discovery Channel at eight years old. He was taking the controls of his dad's microlight at ten. He funded his first licence by free-diving for crayfish, selling snake venom, and restringing tennis rackets.\nThe around-the-world trip nearly didn't happen twice. Sponsors walked after a Cirrus ditched near Hawaii and the CAPS pull ran on every news channel — nobody wanted their logo on a small plane over an ocean. So JP and Louis Cole self-funded it, and JP is honest about what that cost: the fourteen-hour legs, the multi-hour shouting match somewhere between Fiji and Kiribati, and the weight of being responsible for a non-pilot's life for the first time.\nIn this episode:\nMeeting Mike Blyth in 1999 — and building his airplane twenty years later\nGrowing up flying \"sketchy\" weight-shift trikes over the African bush\nWhy Southern Africa has a GA scene almost nobody expects\nMoving to New Zealand at seventeen and rebuilding from scratch in a third language\nMeeting Louis Cole on a sand dune and having his life change in a day\nSigning with Discovery, then watching the...","thumbnail_url":"https://img.transistorcdn.com/s8a-VNhA3KT8ziTM9GEoglQYN8nsFNC-InL8Qj1FlcM/rs:fill:0:0:1/w:400/h:400/q:60/mb:500000/aHR0cHM6Ly9pbWct/dXBsb2FkLXByb2R1/Y3Rpb24udHJhbnNp/c3Rvci5mbS80OWFm/YzIzMjA3N2UwMGRj/MmFlY2YzNTNlOGJj/N2RlZC5qcGVn.webp","thumbnail_width":300,"thumbnail_height":300}