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