Jean checking the wiring

Jean, Director of The Airplane Factory

It is essential to keep a regular watch under the hood and ensure the Rotax engine remains in peak condition

Back in the air routing from Light Flight to Virginia where the airport was declared IMC and closed to VFR traffic due to a nasty haze that had settled over this part of the world. Luckily after requesting Special VFR I was allowed to return to land after being initially diverted to Pietermaritzburg

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The problem being near the coast is that the salty air is relentless and attacks every part of the plane. Jean, a Director of The Airplane Factory and chief assembly and technical guru, was in Durban this Wednesday and gave ZDL a good annual anti-corrosion spray as well as checking the wiring after our recent electrical fault. Thanks Jean for the factory's continued commitment to good service.

Birthday Clouds

Johannesburg was the destination to fetch our Sling ZDL from The Airplane Factory. Here's the trip on my birthday in pics...

 

The routing from The Airplane Factory in Johannesburg to Wonderboom Airport in Pretoria took me north past the Johannesburg CBD and towers

En Route from Durban to Johannesburg we needed to pass the escarpment and mountain range that divides the Gauteng Province in the north from our KwaZulu-Natal Province in the East - you can see the thick cloud back in the background ahead of us

We decided this would definitely be IMC to continue and we turned back to Ladysmith where we waited over breakfast for the clouds to burn away

The friendly Engen fuel station owner was more than obliging as he ran Louis back and forth 3 times to top up his tanks whilst I waited at the Ladysmith Airfield with Louis' Savannah.

After breakfast we got back in the air and the clouds were scattering, but nevertheless pummelled us as we flew over, under and through some of them

Back in the seat of my own plane which was waiting for me at Tedderfield after the 300 hour service at The Airplane Factory

Louis takes a seat in a new Sling ZU-TES being finished at The Airplane Factory - "yes I want one just like this" he enthused before signing a deal for one to be built over 2 months, using his Savannah sale as his securing down-payment

Dave and Louis deliver his sold Savannah to his buyer in Pretoria

We landed the Savannah at Wonderboom Airport - this used to be a tiny airport/airfield and has grown to a vast and impressive national airport which we were told handles more air movements that Johannesburg's International OR Tambo Airport

Guinness YUM

 It was my birthday of course - 24th August and 55 years young. The idea was to drop Louis' plane off in Joburg and return for a birthday dinner, as well as a birthday lunch with my mom and family on Sunday.. none of which became possible after our IMC delay in Ladysmith waiting for the skies to clear. We only arrived in Wonderboom at 5pm and fortunately were able to stay in the airport motel for the night, sans extra clothing or toiletries. I was at least able to down a few drinks and enjoy an impressive meal at the Wonderboom Airport before succumbing to a deep slumber dosed up with medication for my cold and voice which was now reduced to a squeak.


 

Birthday anti-pasta starters at Wonderboom Airport

Fortunately my voice lasted for the trip to Wonderboom, but by the next morning I couldn't say a word. As Louis and I had now delivered his plane to a delighted buyer, we were returning to Durban in my plane and he was on hand to handle all the radio work whilst we took turns flying and also gave the autopilot a turn... thank you MGL for a wonderful product with gps EFIS and autopilot setup.

 

Again the weather was not playing ball and we again made a diversion to Harrysmith, where a friendly local pilot took us under his wing for a few hours whilst the weather improved. The visibility was pretty shitty though due to the phenomenon called (in Afrikaans) Nattigeklei (wet clay). The red clay-sand in the area apparently gets swept up by the winds and if there is humidity present forms a haze of wet clay... not sure how good this is for engines!!!, but with his good advice we managed to make it back to Durban departing at 2pm under the clouds, around and above the mountains which extend up to 8500 ft in this area, and through the wet clay haze. Quite an eventful trip, and both Louis and I confirm we have learnt a lot more about the weather, decision-making in bad weather and flying the plane!

Jaunt to East London

I did a quick jaunt to East London a few days ago with my mate Louis in his Savannah to get it checked out in time for the sale of the plane (the trip we postponed from last week due to the high winds). East London is the home of the Savannah factory. We landed half-way at my favourite landing strip at Port St Johns - up on the top of the mountain and also went past Hole-in-the-Wall, part of the magnificent coastline along the Wild Coast from Durban to East London.. a 3 1/2 hour flight away (with headwind) and 2h 50mins returning (with small tailwind).

 

Hole-in-the-Wall : Wild Coast of South Africa

On top of the mountain at the Port St Johns airfield

Landing at Port St Johns



Destination What's Landing - aeropark in East London. Beautiful homes with hangars attached

Savannah to Sling

For a moment I thought like a traitor in a Savannah with Louis... he needed to fly to East London to fix his auto-pilot servo. However, I have helped him broker a sale of the plane and he is using those funds as his deposit on a new Sling from The Airplane Factory. So I was happy to assist and fly "wingman".

The journey was short-lived though as the cold front from the Cape had hit East London with hectic winds, so we have postponed the journey and instead enjoyed breakfast at King Shaka Airport.

Dave and Louis in his Savannah ZU-LPL

Beautiful morning over Durban as we head to Virginia and then request clearance to land at King Shaka International

King Shaka terminal buildings behind us and LPL

Morning sun coming up over the Indian Ocean off Durban

That's my jet in the background... ok, next life!

Away goes the Dragon Warrior

Thanks Jean (right) and Daniel (2nd right), Director and Maintenance supervisor of The Airplane Factory respectively who came down to Durban on Wednesday to deliver a new Sling, to service one here and to ferry our Dragon Warrior (ZDL) back to Tedderfield for the 300 hour service and attend to the few technical problems we have been having. The under-read of the efis I experienced the other day turned out to be a salt build-up inside the pitot tube with the horrendous sea-air in Durban and this was sorted out and was fortunately not a power issue.

Jean and Daniel ended up taking the whole day with the service and delivery, also arriving late, and so had to stay over the night before ferrying our plane back to Johannesburg. As you can see from the margaritas in hand, we all made the best of the stay-over!!!

ZDL owners Dave (left) and Llewellyn (2nd left) with The Airplane Factory gurus

Jean at the controls and Daniel head off with our baby to Johannesburg where I hope to fetch the plane again in a few days

Precautionary Landing

Shaken but not stirred is how I like my Martini, not my plane. Yesterday was a bit of shaken though as I took off on runway 05 Virginia for a flight to Howick. My daughter Kate-Lynn has organised a little surprise for her boyfriend James. I was to take him unannounced on a 45 minute flight inland to our midlands area of the Province where she was going to meet up in her car and we were going to do the Midlands Meander and lunch in the farming and craft area around Howick, also famous for our Howick Falls... a waterfall on the Umgeni River below Midmar Dam, the main water supply for our Province.

Everything seemed normal as I did my mags check and pre-takeoff checks and I ran through the emergency procedures with James... should there be any abnormality on take-off I would re-land the plane on the runway if there was space remaining, failing that would hop over the bushes that separate the runway from the beach and land on the beach, or if it was possible we would do a low-level circuit and return to the airfield. I pointed out where the fire extinguisher was located behind the ledge at his elbow and pointed out that to detach it, he would need to lift the clip and remove the extinguisher from the bracket. I also told him not to touch any of the controls and that I would take charge of any emergency... not actually anticipating that we would follow these procedures today.

ATC gave us the cleared take-off announcement and we edged onto the runway, lined up and did a last-minute re-check of engine temperatures, flap setting and harnesses and checked with James that we were ok to roll...

I gently squeezed on the power while maintaining course along the centre line, then put the throttle into full power position and watched the speed increase anticipating rotation/take-off at 45 kts (83 kmh). It seemed to take a fraction longer than anticipated to build up speed as we were eating up the runway. As we reached 45 kts I had half a hesitation, but only half as to whether I was imagining it or that we had taken further than normal to get to take-off speed. I gently lifted the plane off the runway and then as normal I held the stick slightly forward to flatten the climb to enable the plane to build up more speed before climbing. But nothing happened. In fact we reduced speed to 39 kts which means the plane should not be sustaining flight. The EFIS warning light was flashing and the audio warning "LOW SPEED" was sounding. It usually does this as we are building up speed down the runway and when it did then I made a mental note to warn a future passenger not to be alarmed as the low speed warning was normal until we had built up enough speed for flight. However this warning was now sounding regularly as we skimmed low over the tiny bit of runway left... certainly not enough to reland the plane. I skimmed over the trees at the end of the runway at only 100ft instead of the 300ft we should have been at now and took a gentle turn to the beach. A bit of a panic had set in as I had never experienced this before. The engine was sounding normal though so I was determined to see the airspeed climb as normal to 70kts which would be the best rate of climb speed for this plane. I was now over the beach, still at 100 ft and the engine was sounding ok. I knew I needed to do something while the engine was still alive and we were still in the air. I must fly the plane. So I started a gentle turn out over the sea to return to the airfield, conscious of not wanting to stall the plane in the air at that low speed, nor wanting to ditch in the sea. I realised that in order to prevent a stall I needed to make the turn as gentle as possible which meant a wider circle and by now we were out to sea almost as far as the shark nets. I reassured James that we weren't achieving the best flying speed I was happy with and we were returning to land. At this stage I called the ACT at Virginia and said we needed to return immediately to the airfield and could I have clearance to land. She asked what the problem was and whether I needed emergency vehicles for a crash landing. By this stage the airspeed had increased to 70kts but inexplicably the engine revs were showing 6700 which is impossibly high. The take-off specs for the Rotax engine are 5800 revs for a maximum of 5 minutes and 5400 continuous. One would normally have reached cruising speed by this stage and one would turn the constant speed propeller setting to cruise so that the revs reduce and stabilise around 5000 revs per minute. I was at a loss to understand what was happening but used the increased speed to gain a little height and I reduced the throttle setting to try and bring the revs down as they were indicating a possible imminent engine failure. I was just thankful that the engine was indeed performing and getting us back to the other end of the runway so that we could turn onto final approach and reland the plane back in the direction we had taken off in against the wind and as slow as possible. Getting us back on to finals was a huge relief and I was thankful to see tarmac ahead of us. We touched down as normally as possible and I was hoping that James did not see anything too untoward about the flight. My mind was racing to consider all possibilities and as to what had just happened.


I landed back on runway 05

In retrospect I have come up with a few possibilities and am thankful to have had a safe experience which has taught me a few lessons and re-programmed my head to do a few things differently should something like this happen again.

1. If I ever feel uncomfortable again as I did for a split-second on take-off, rather abort the take-off than take to the air. This is easier said than done if there is little runway left, but I have made a conscious decision to analyse a runway I intend to take off from in future to pre-decide what would be the latest decision point for a take-off. This also depends on the wind speed and direction.

2. Most importantly, instead of being fixated on the readings given by the computer screen of the EFIS I need to read my backup instruments for confirmation of what I am reading. I intend to put a little marker on my pressure instrument - the airspeed indicator - at the 45 kts mark for take-off and the 70 kts mark for climb speed. Whilst these instruments are quite tiny and difficult to read at a glance, a glance to check if the speed is between the two markers would be all I need to confirm whether the computer instrument is giving the correct reading. My feeling is that the recent electrical fault we had could have perhaps damaged the sender unit on the EFIS so that the incorrect airspeed and engine revs were being displayed. The engine could possibly have been performing perfectly, just the readout gave me the mistaken impression that we were in imminent danger of an engine failure and were about to fall out of the sky due to the lack of speed.



This is what our EFIS looks like and the position of the AirSpeed indicator and the engine Rev Counter

 I intend to go back during the week and do a runway check.. speeding down the runway with the intention of not taking off but comparing the speed readouts of the EFIS and the pressure instrument to see if there is any deviation. This will give me some clue.

So all in all, possibly nothing wrong with the plane's engine at all, possibly just an EFIS (Electronic Flight Information System) readout error and a good learning curve for me. The Captain Morgan's and coke certainly tasted good after this!

Night flight to Margate

Breaking out of the comfort zone of our local sky, we did our first night flight to Margate for dinner last night, returning to Virginia just before lights-out. Margate and Pietermaritzburg both have a system of 7-clicks of your radio button to activate the lights-on switch, but Virginia have gone on to power-saving and switch off theirs completely at 10pm.

50-

 We set off from Virginia as the sun was going down and had arranged a taxi to fetch us at Margate Airport to go to the Crayfish Inn in nearby Ramsgate for Llewellyn's birthday. The wind was pumping 30-40kts (50-70kmh) but is was blowing from the north straight down the runway and gave us an awesome tailwind all the way there. The flight was about 40mins and arriving in Margate we could see the bright lights of Margate but only blackness where we imagined the runway would be. I was a bit hesitant to turn the lights of the runway on too early in case they had an auto-timed turn-off function as we were landing; so round about when we thought it was time to land I tapped the radio button 7 times and the lights sprung to life lighting up the runway below. It was like magic. I lined the plane up for a landing and Llewellyn managed to take a short video clip which is posted on YouTube here.

With the sun going down and the darkness quickly gathering we headed down the coastline to the Margate seaside resort.

The Crayfish Inn in Ramsgate, near Margate

Our Sling ZDL stands proud on the Margate airport apron

Lights and blackness below as we head back to Durban with a headwind that slowed us down from our usual 110kts (200kmh) to half that speed at times. Ascending to 3500ft the wind was a little calmer, but not much.

Durban's Bluff and the blackness of the harbour come into view