Morne Booij-Liewes We start this month with a new Air Tractor AT-502B, ZS-XKB. The manufacturer describes this model as “the world’s most popular ag plane with over 1000 of these aircraft having been manufactured since 1987. Several of these are already in service in South Africa in agricultural, firefighting andRead More →
I reckon plane vs car races are usually pointless stunts. Airshow acts have a car racing up and down the runway burning rubber throwing U-turns while a plane roars overhead and does stall turns at the ends of the runway. Like professional wrestling, the winner is chosen beforehand. This doesn’tRead More →
SA Flyer columnist John Bassi is one of the last of the one-man businesses to successfully operate a Bell 206 JetRanger helicopter. He uses his helicopter ZS-HFD, in an incredible variety of roles and has published a book called ‘Pilot in the Wild’ describing his helicopter experiences. Apart from theRead More →
MAF SA’s missionary pilot, Mark Liprini, shares a day from his logbook. It was the usual quiet morning in the office. I was in the process of demolishing a delightful hot chapati, to accompany the fresh coffee. My logbooks had just been written up from the flying earlier in theRead More →
Bonanza Wheels-up While Training This discussion is to promote safety and not to establish liability. CAA’s report contains padding and repetition, so in the interest of clarity, I have paraphrased extensively. Date and time 20 January 2017 at about 1447Z Aircraft registration ZS-JBE Aircraft model Beechcraft BonanzaRead More →
Text and Pictures – Grant Duncan Smith Helicopters have been very successfully used in a massive environmental preservation operation in the Western Cape. The ‘Helihack’ alien vegetation clearing operation was conducted in October on Table Mountain. The challenges facing those who seek to rid the Cape of alien vegetation wereRead More →
John Bassi Saving the Giant Sable in Angola Part one. John Bassi The giant sable bull arrived dangling beneath legendary wildlife pilot, Barney O’Hara’s MD500 helicopter, the antelope’s four-foot-long horns curving back toward its flanks like the scythe of a backhoe. As the aircraft came into view, hundreds of peopleRead More →
IRIS – HER EARLY YEARS. PART 7 Air Kenya Laura McDermid continues her stories about Iris McCallum in East Africa. From my veranda window in Watamu the serene Indian ocean stretched out to meet the horizon in an endless embrace. Without the puffy white clouds that dotted the azure sky,Read More →
“Hello. I am your Examiner…I am here to help you!” Oh yeah…Really? I am one of those people who loses two nights of sleep before an Instrument Rating Check Ride (IRT). I spent ten years of my life at boarding school and four years at university. When that was overRead More →
One Friday afternoon, two venerable Douglas DC-3 airliners started their engines at Lanseria Airport and taxied out for takeoff. This was in the pre ‘bantustan’ era when legal gambling was prohibited in South Africa. Instead, local gamblers were obliged to journey to one of the neighbouring countries such as Botswana,Read More →
