King Shaka by night

I took Louis for a touch-and-go at King Shaka International, a 5-minute flight from our home base at Virginia in Durban, last night. The sky was clear and the Virginia Tower was closed but King Shaka had no problem allowing us a quick visit.  The wind was almost negligible but they routed us to runway 24 from the north and thereafter we did some landings at take-offs at Virginia from both sides - both 05 and 23. We also flew along the coast past the city and refinery and climbed up to 2 500 feet almost touching the clouds which looked dark and mysterious by night. Awesome!

Louis gets the feel of Durban by night

 

The sparkling lights of suburbia below

The red light glow keeping your night vision intact and the dashboard lit

Durban beachfront with illuminated piers - no pics of King Shaka as it was full-on concentration landing by night

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

Mid-week jaunt

Durban on a sunny day this week

I did most of my initial NPL flight training over the winter months May - August when the weather in Durban is perfect and clear every day, apart from a little early morning mist up in Cato Ridge where my training school was based. Llewellyn is sharing the plane doing his training for his PPL now and every morning the skies are blue and clear... so I'm getting FOMO - Fear of Missing Out!!

So mid-week I had to escape for a little jaunt to Pietrmaritzburg for lunch. It also gave me the chance to fly over a farm near Pmb - see photo above, which has a level section suitable for a future runway and hangars we are looking into. Could be good if we can get the landowner on board.

Over the rainbow

We had quite a busy Sunday, but the end of the day was not complete without a quick jaunt down the coast and luckily we did. Justin Wright and brother-in-law Brad, my previous NPL Instuctor were also in the sky with an impressive camera and managed to take these awesome action shots of the Dragon Warrior over the sea just south of Amanzimtoti. Thanks Justin.

 

 

 

Happy snap

Just a happy snap from our recent trip to Mozambique :-)

Make sure of your paperwork

Re: Several SA Pilots just arrested in Ondangwa, Namibia

by henk-indabush » Mon May 06, 2013 2:02 pm

SA CAA Part 24 CAR

International operations

24.02.7 (1) An authority to fly is only valid for flight in South African airspace.

 

(2) Notwithstanding the provision of sub-regulation (1), a non-type certificated aircraft, issued with a South African Authority to fly, may be flown outside the Republic’s borders if the appropriate authority with jurisdiction over the relevant airspace has given prior permission for the aircraft to be flown in such airspace, in the full knowledge that the authority to fly is not equivalent to a certificate of airworthiness issued in terms of ICAO Annex 8 to the Convention.

Namibia requires all foreign aircraft to obtain "Overflight and Landing Permission" prior to entering their airspace. I have always received such permission, with a number attached to it. When requested for said number once in Namibia , I found that once I could provide the number, there were no hassles. Never.

 

-----------------------------------

 

Having just returned from our trip over the border to Mozambique this story above of a group of 22 pilots on a round trip to Botswana, and Namibia proves that it is critical that your airplane paperwork and flight permits are in order before you fly. It seems there was some bureaucratic bungling but these poor guys were put in jail and have been harassed by the authorities to try and get their planes out of the country again.

 

Download my Checklists 

 

Check my checklist for Mozambique in the blog article below (links to my SkyDrive) and make sure your permits are in order and all of the documents required to be carried in your plane are also in order.

Also on my SkyDrive is the Index of documents that I created for our international flight and was careful to ensure that the originals or certified copies of these documents were on hand for inspection should it be requested.

The documents are:

International Flight Documents
Mozambique Procedures
Mozambique Flight Costs
Flying Dates Expiry Checklist

 

Missed your BA flight? Catch ours..

Thanks Lee for this great photo.. just to show we were there with the big guys !!

Mozam movie - made a 3 min YouTube movie of our trip

I made a short movie of our flight to Mozambique, here's the link to the movie clip - with my GoPro camera views from the sky, the beach and underwater.