Brits and Braais

Welcome to Brits. Yes this is Brits airfield, a few miles west of Joburg, bathed in morning sunlight. Today's sortie started with an 'airfield evaluation' at a disused airfield called 'Odie airstrip', now used mainly for drag racing. You may recall from my Nampa training (see November 2011 blog) that sometimes in Africa there is scant information about an airfield (it's length, surface condition, slope, surroundings, close by obstacles) and so it is necessary for us bush pilots to have a means to assess these things on the fly. So today I tried to recall that which was drummed into me at Nampa, during a high pass (1000ft), medium pass (100ft) and low pass (5ft). Yep that good old low pass. At 5ft we were just about skipping over the tops of the fuel drums which currently mark the edge of the drag racing portion of the strip.

After Odie we moved on to Brits, a longer airfield nestling below a range of hills. Unsurprisingly oh the way my instructor and I discovered some 'problems' with the aircraft, eventually ending up with a practice forced landing (glide approach) into Brits. Rest assured that in real life MAF aircraft have one of the best safety records in the world of aviation. However in training there is an average of 3 emergencies per flight. Today's were: a window coming open in flight, a sick passenger (fortunately not fully simulated), an engine failure after take-off, and a rough-running engine which eventually stopped when I was within gliding range of the field. As the old chinese proverb says "the more we sweat in training, the less we bleed in battle".

 

Then we turned back towards Lanseria and I was given a simulated low-cloud and storms scenario, forcing me to fly low over the hills/mountains pictured right. You'll be pleased to hear we made it through the gaps and back to base for lunch.

Today was the birthday of one of the MAF SA staff, and local tradition requires a braai (BBQ) and chocolate cake so we had boerewors (curly sausage) in a bun for lunch. I  must introduce the same birthday tradition back in MAF Kenya, although it will probably be with goat.