PPL solo to Light Flight and Pietermaritzburg

Maritzburg Tower, ZDL coming for a visit!

Had some good airtime towards my PPL this weekend... 3hours including some time under the "foggles" and a solo flight to Pietermaritzburg.. just a pity the savages had closed the airport restaurant when I got there so was hungry and thirsty. Had to expedite my landing and backtracking as the Airlink was zooming in.

PPl Conversion

Back to Light Flight Cato Ridge to set Red Rocket's idling

On my way to my PPL with Ayre Aviation Centre at Virginia... I had to fly up to Light Flight today to advance the idling on the plane; then flew to Pietermaritzburg for breakfast and spend lunch-time looking for an airfield in the Hammarsdale area to build a hangar. Returning back to Virginia I was in time to refuel for Llewellyn's first PPL lesson with Warren from Ayre. This will get Llewellyn his student licence then we will do a heap of flying for our trip to Johanesburg next month and Cape Town in April. Much better way to spend a Tueday with blue skies!!

Red Rocket looking glorious at Virginia

Llewellyn has his first PPL lesson with Warren from Ayre

PPL on it's way

Had my 3rd PPL lesson today with Kyle from Ayre Aviation Centre in Durban. The conversion of my NPL licence to PPL requires me to do 10 hours dual training (5 of which instrument training) and 5 hours solo. I was planning my solo as a trip to Johannesburg for the planes 100 hour service, but the Chief Flying Instructor was having a heart attack that I would be out of his jurisdiction, so I will have to log those 5 locally.

The "foggles" were quite fun, flying blind with only the EFIS in sight, but I soon got used to it a apart from drifting to the left, and can see that I will be able to get the hang of it. I have already logged 3.9 of the 10 hours dual so am well on my way to my PPL flight test, having already passed the PPL exams when I did my NPL licence.

Welcome home to Durban

Great to be back in Durban and able to fly our plane again. January was hectic re-opening the office, then our January big bash party and last week of January driving to Cape Town then flying to Bulgaria for skiing. So good to be back and up in the skies again (in Red Rocket).

Today I started my first lesson converting my NPL licence to PPL at Virginia and then took our Danish Couchsurfing guests up in the air for a short flip. The weather was not lloking great and rain was predicted for the whole weekend, but it's been holding off, so I managed to get some air-time and took both Christoffer (who said he was afraid of heights) and Simon up for the first flip in a small plane. Exhilarating and they both did well, despite them having a considerable hang-over from the night before.

Sling Skydiving..

The Sling boys are trying some more adventurous stuff - here's a skydive out of Mike's Sling TAF. I would be frightened of bumping my head on the tail!!

Click on the YouTube link for the video clip.