Aviation Stories

[kublai]

My Greatest Aviation Story was definitely my education in South Africa. As I love to travel (as far as possible) anyway, it was clear for me from day one - I'm not going to do it in Germany.
The first idea one gets here is off course s.th. like Florida, but I visited the States several times, so it was time for me to look out for a new experience now.
I googled some days and suddenly found a lovely site of a German guy who does some marketing in Europe for a South African Flight School called NelAir. They replied immediately (which several other schools needed weeks for) and appeared to be quite professional and experienced in teaching foreigners. They made an offer that was very hard to withstand: 4900 Euros for a PPL including full accomodation and food and everything - the next site I visted was Expedia to book a flight to
Jo-burg : )
As the only thing they told me was "We'll meet you in Nelspruit", I arrived at KMIA (Kruger Mpumalanga Int. Airport) in Nelspruit starting to look for my flightschool.. but there was no flight school at this airport at all and as I came a flight earlier than expected no one was there to pick me up
Some calls later I figured out that there is also the "old Nelspruit Airfield" where NelAir is located, so I called them - "we'll pick you up immediately" was the response, so I went outside expecting a car to come around.

Waiting for a lift at KMIA:



30mins later a friendly guy came out of the terminal saying: "Hi I'm Stefan, your instuctor, your

plane is waiting for you.."

No cars in Neslpruit ! Of course we flew the 4 mins over to FANS..



Final approach on my new home for the next five weeks:



The first thing I met after landing was a Boeing Stearman..



as being in Africa now - Off course also these guys were not missing :




Fortunately Stefan did not tell me the truth - my instructor was Chermain:



Accomodation was plain and simple - the perfect atmospehere to learn 6 subjects in 3 weeks



ZS-EDT being refuelled for a little trip to the Kruger Park I joined..







bird's view on FANS:



Every afternoon at around 5 o'clock some guys met for a daily Super Cub formation flight:





The view from my living room onto my working horse:



A lot of small companies are located at FANS restoring and painting everything that flies:





NelAir even operates crop-dusters and fire-fighters, this one was a fire fighter from former GDR

(east Germany) with about 1000hp:



There were also a lot of young CPL students, so they did a lot of IF and nightflying - I never let

them go without me:



Some days later there was an REM concert in Jo-burg, so Nico (a CPL student) did a 206 conversion

by flying us to Jo-burg.. The screen was quite dirty, no towels, so Staefan's little Teddy had to

do the job..



poor Teddy..



The wheather became ugly - so Nico's conversion was combined with some IF training:





Finally the VOR stopped working, the clouds came down to 500ft above ground, so Stefan safely

guided us through the valleys.. "Take the next valley left, and then the next one to the right.."

so we were cruising in tree level for half an hour and finally made it home..



So even me got an opportunity to ride the 300hp bull for picking up some tourists:



Sunset with a LET:




Next trip was to Chitwa in the Kruger (my first bush strip landing) we had to drop some pilots

there.. Fist you do a low level fly over to get rid of Rhinos and Zebras..



A Caravan picked up the other guys..



And me happyly flying home then..



Stefan wanted to show what steep turn means in Africa:



This is me going for my second solo cross country:



the funny thing about ZS-EDT was, when I spoke to an old guy from the Loevfeld Aero Club he told

me, when he was making his PPL in FANS in 1964, he was doing it on ZS-EDT !! This old thing was

serving on the same airport for almost 40 years now !

3 1/2 weeks later I was done, unfortunately it was the easter weekend, so waiting for the papers to

go to Jo-burg and back would have taken 5 days.. So I jumped on a NelAir Cessna 402 going to

Jo-burg and went to the CAA in person.



Starting with my training on Feb 28th I was holding my licence in my hand at March 24th ! From that

moment I spend most of my time close to the Crocodile River for game watching..



Finally my father was making some holidays in Maputo (Mocambique) so I flew over to fetch him for a

week.. here I explained my camera to him - he seems to know already..



after take-off Stefan wanted to do some air-surfing on the beach of Mocambique, so we flew down the

coast..





check the altimeter : )





Some guys are building Cheetahs down there so father had to try it:



and some game again..





so that's it.. now I have to be happy with Langeoog and the rest of boring Germany : )


Cheers

Kublai

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[kencalman]

Wow, Daniel You are quite the adventurer, aren't you You got a nice set of photos there and your adventure is extremely enviable. Hey, I'm not sure I like the ones where the world is at the wrong angle, though or when the altimeter is saying "0"

SA does look interesting. I'm going to have to take more vacations

Keep those adventures coming, will you