Yearly Archives: 2013
Through The Delta And On To Victoria Falls
We have now left the Okavanga Delta. But not before a rather incredible stay at the Shinde Lodge. This lodge is run by the Ker & Downey Group, which is a very large safari tour operator in Botswana. It is a an amazing five star lodge that is right in the middle of the delta. We landed on their private dirt runway, which you can see below:
During our stay there, we saw every type of animal that I had hoped to see, including lions, leopards, giraffes, elephants and a whole bunch more! I took over 300 pictures and couldn’t stop shooting… Here are a couple of my favorites:
Off To The Okavango Delta
We are about to leave the Haina Kalahari Lodge. We have had a wonderful 2 days here with lots of animal sightings, such as impalas, kudus, warthogs, etc. Tons of pictures as you can imagine, such as this one:This lodge really surprised me. Despite being in a very remote area, the lodge was “very comfortable”, as you can see below:
Most of our game drives where in a Land Cruiser and like any civilized game drive, we took breaks along the way:
Now it is time to jump into the planes and head further north to the Okavango Delta:
Into the Kalahari Desert
The first leg of our journey was from Lanseria airport near Johannesburg, South Africa to Gabarone, Botswana. As you can see, Paul and I were dressed for the occasion and ready to go:
We had 4 planes in our convoy and we flew in a loose formation the whole way. The lead plane did the radios and planes 2 – 4 followed along visually with a 5 second delay on takeoff and transponders off during the flight. Paul and I were in the 4th plane. Since he was flying the first leg, I had plenty of time to take pictures, like this one of the Hartebeespoort Dam:
While we had a flight plan and plenty of GPS equipment, navigation was as simple as “follow the green plane in front of us”. As you can see below, we did that pretty well:
We remained in formation all the way to Gabarone, Botswana, where we got a group clearance to land. You can see in the picture below that the 2nd plane in our group was turning off the runway, while plane 3 was landing and we were just behind them on short final!
After a quick stop for fuel and customs, we were off on the next leg directly into the Kalahari Desert. I did the flying on this leg and it was the most remote environment I had ever seen! No roads, no lakes, no towns… Basically NOTHING as far as you could see in any direction. But I did get to do my first dirt strip landing! It was the private landing strip of the Haina Kalahari Lodge! Upon landing, we were were picked up by land cruiser at the side of the runway and taken to a “very comfortable” lodge right in the middle of a game reserve. I knew we would be staying in a tent. However, it was the most luxurious tent I had ever seen:
We were entirely out of cell phone range and 120 km from the nearest town. But, we were not exactly roughing it 😉
Final Departure Briefing
Nick and Christine did an amazing job in preparing a 2 inch prep binder that itemized every detail of the journey including charts, photos, radio freqs, etc. Really, all we have to do is fly! In addition, they also prepared rather thorough survival kits for each of the four airplanes.
As you can see, Bruce was perhaps most impressed by how complete the survival kits were 😉
Checkride Day in South Africa
Our entire group of pilots has now arrived and yesterday morning we all gathered for an ATC briefing. Here is a pic of our group:
After he did a great landing, we took a coffee break before heading back. Here we are in front of our plane on the dirt strip:
First Flight in South Africa
After all the studying and preparations that I have done over the past 6 months, today was the day for my first flight in South Africa!
14 Hour Layover in Mumbai
Formation Flying (Part 2)
I finally found time to finish the part 2 video on the Formation Flight Training.
Actually, I was on a Newark to Hong Kong flight that was 15.5 hours and I had already finished my email + dinner + a movie and still wasn’t sleepy… So I finished this video …
Formation Flying (Part 1)
With only a week before my Singapore adventures begin, I had to squeeze in one last US flight adventure. So this weekend, a fellow Cirrus pilot (David) and I did Cirrus formation flight training @ McCollum field with a couple of former US Air Force pilots(Rich & Stan), who are pictured below during our pre-flight briefing:
During the briefing, David and I learned about formation protocols, hand signals, and the various maneuvers we were about to do.
After a minor maintenance delay, it was time to depart. But the weather was not ideal.
It was dreary and windy with an overcast layer @ ~ 3000 FT and too much crosswind for a true formation takeoff . Instead, we did an interval takeoff with 10 second spacing.
By staying below the clouds at least we didn’t have the sun in our eyes! (How’s that 4 looking on the bright side of things) 😉
Rich sat right seat in my plane, while Stan sat right seat in David’s plane. We took turns in the lead position and proceeded to do all of the maneuvers we learned on the ground, such as root, fingertip, and echelon turns.
Here is a picture of David & Stan just approaching on my left wing:
You can see some of the flight in the clip below:
After the basic maneuvers, then the real fun began! We did high speed formation approaches back at McCollum field, followed by very steep (greater than 60 degree bank) power off touch and goes!
Clearly the R9 was not accustomed to such aggressive flight attitudes and we even heard the avionics warnings, such as “excessive sink” and “excessive bank”!
I am still working on part 2 of the video, which shows the approach and landings.
Check back on my Youtube channel in a couple of days to see it.
Overall, it was an incredible experience that I highly recommend to any pilot!
This type of training does wonders for improving the precision of your stick and rudder skills!
Despite the dreary weather, you can see everyone had huge smiles after the flight: