MC enjoys first night flight with Dad

Hey it's red in here

Yes Captain

Durban Harbour by night

Full  moon flight over Durban

Hey, it was full moon over the sea and city and perfect conditions for a night flight. Mark had fitness class on earlier so we only got into the sky after the Air Traffic Controller at Virginia had closed. The airport was quiet and we were the only ones around.

I did two practice circuits first and perfected  my landings in the dark, actually forgetting to put on my landing lights - as I had done in training... not too bad without lights, relying on the dim glow of the runway lights.

Then with Mark on board we ventured a little out of the circuit down to the old Durban International Airport so he could get the feel of the plane and take in the city lights at 1000 feet, before climbing to 1500 feet for the flight back in to Virginia... not another soul in the air and we had the space and the beautiful full moon over the sea to ourselves.

Getting an underbelly wash..

Quite a job but pretty rewarding climbing under the plane, using some elbow grease and washing every spot and oil or petrol mark off, then polishing up the underside of your plane. It is also a chance to take some unusual pics from different angles and a chance to see the name Dragon Warrior underneath.

You can see the start of "Dragon Warrior" under the fusilage

Nifty little trolley lets me lie on my back and clean the whole underside

 

Mkuze for the weekend

The best part about flying is being able to choose a destination which would be far to drive to and then get there in a zip! Also great to have good mates who fly and can share these amazing experiences. We are so privileged to be able to do this and explore some of the incredible parts of our country. Mkuze area to the north of our Province is home to several huge game reserves and dozens of safari lodges. We chose Zebra Hills Game Reserve which is a game lodge and reserve home to the big 5 and collectively the group saw 4 of the big 5 in 2 days... lion, buffalo, rhino, and leopard. We saw about 10 giraffe and loads of Nyala, Impala, Kudu, warthog, a croc, Zebra, and Wildebees and had a few days of chilling and drinking!!

 

Beautiful sunsets, hot days and freezing nights

The clouds had formed over the Ubombo Mountains to the left when we took off from Mkuze for home. Fortunately the sky was clear ahead.

Runway 35 Mkuze

In the skies over KwaZulu-Natal, our home Province

North coast coastline

The three planes bedded down for the nights LPL, ZDL and SAA

Richards Bay from the air

The view from Zulu Hills over the reserve

Sunset whilst on game drive

The waterhole at our lodge

Louis and Jeanette were Robert Redford and Meryl Streep in our Out of Africa adventure

Cheers on the game drive as we stop for a wine-stop!



On the game drive

Lee and Marc in the front seats



Wine stop

The baby croc at the waterhole will be moved when he gets a little bigger and wants to eat everything within reach

 

Commerical Pilot's Licence

I made an official start to my CPL licence today when I got my huge box of training notes from Ayre Aviation. It looks quite daunting but a good time to start while my PPL exams are still quite fresh. I'll tackle them slowly, then do the additional training. I already have 200 hours, so don't need to do hour-building and also have my night-rating, both of which are starters for the CPL. I will need to do 10 hours additional instrument training as well as 5 hours in a retractable undercarriage plane, but all-in-all not too hectic.

Durban's Stamford Hill Aerodrome

Just a bit of history here... the original Stamford Hill Aerodrome and Tower in Durban, next door to the Country Club and which is now the Natal Mounted Rifles (NMR) headquarters, is pictured in front of the airfield - in those days there were no runways, just a field or circle and you could land in any direction according to the wind blowing. This obviously took a lot more space and over the years runways and cross-runways were developed instead. This airfield no longer exists and the present M4 highway runs approximately mid-way through the old airfield.

When South African Airways started flying DC-4s the main airport was moved from Stamford Hill to the site of the Louis Botha Airport south of Durban and this remained as Durban's international airport until the opening of King Shaka Airport in 2010 in time for the 2010 World Cup Football event in South Africa. We were there at Louis Botha Airport on it's closing day and then visited King Shaka the next day for it's opening - 1st May 2010.

The present Virginia Airport for lighter aircraft lies a few kilometres to the north of the old Stamford Hill aerodrome and was opened in 1959 as a more suitable facility for these aircraft and the air traffic in Durban was effectively split between the two airports from then on.

Final Approach runway 05 Virginia



Our airplane ZDL parked at King Shaka International, Durban on our recent trip to Mozambique as we needed to clear passport control and customs