Update: He made it! Baron touched down next to the Atlantic on September 8th after 17 weeks, over 50 airports, and 3,600 miles of flight. It was an incredible journey and an incredible accomplishment.

This summer, Baron Tayler flew a powered parachute from coast to coast.

This was a journey of approximately 50 legs covering over 3600 miles. This trip was expected to take about 10 weeks, but weather pushed it to 17 weeks! It included stopovers and media events in dozens of locations as the trip progressed.

The trip had three objectives... and we accomplished all of them!

To expose the sport of powerchuting to tens of millions of people.

To raise awareness about the PowerChute Education Foundation, Inc. (PCEF), a federally recognized 501(c)3 tax exempt educational charitable foundation.

To raise funds for the PCEF's charitable project, Emergency Low Level Arial Search & Surveillance (E.L.L.A.S.S.).

About E.L.L.A.S.S.

E.L.L.A.S.S. (Emergency Low Level Aerial Search & Surveillance) is a project which supports the efforts of police, fire departments and SAR (Search and Rescue) teams when they are looking for missing people. This support is rendered through the use of powered parachutes being used as "eyes in the sky" for the ground search teams. Additional information about E.L.L.A.S.S. may be found at www.ellass.org.

As the first project of its kind sponsored by a charitable foundation, E.L.L.A.S.S. has caught the attention of people and organizations all across America. During the cross-country trip people were able to visit the PCEF and E.L.L.A.S.S. web sites, follow the progress of the trip on a daily basis, view photos and watch videos, and if they wished to lend support, pledge money for every mile traveled.

Planning

Over two years in the planning, Macy Advertising & Public Relations lined up media interviews for Baron all across America. He appeared on national network TV and cable news programs, (ABC, NBC, CBS, FOX... plus CNN & MSNBC) as well as being interviewed on all the major talk shows. Magazine and newspaper articles were printed by the hundreds. Never before has the sport of powered parachuting been exposed to such a wide audience, and hopefully this trip will help take the sport "main stream." Macy’s goal was to build the cross-country trip into such a large media event that it creates its own momentum and literally captures the "imagination" of the public, which quickly began to desire updates as to how the trip was progressing.