Thursday, 12 June 2008

Margate Flying

Toyota cars on old Cato Ridge AirfieldAs the Kalahari Bundu Bash was cancelled for the 3rd year in a row because of a lack of registrations we - ie. Jeff and André decided to do something else instead. Last year they (Robbie, André and Jeff) flew down to Margate in their Bantams. This year André, Jeff and I went again.

We left early Tuesday morning, heading for the Umkomaas River mouth. Just as we got over the very broken ground of the Umkomaas valley Durban tower called us on the radio telling us we were "encroaching on the Durban TMA". André told them we were aware of the TMA boundary but were outside and below it, heading for the coast at the Umkomaas mouth. We were told to descend to 2500 feet which took us right into the Umkomaas valley making finding a safe landing spot in a hurry if the engine failed very difficult. But we supposed it was just the air traffic controller doing his job because he had a 737 approaching to land.

Once we reached the coast we flew about 1000ft above the beach to Margate, then turned inland to the airport. André has a cousin who owns a holiday penthouse in a block of flats on the beach at Margate. We also had access to his car, but they couldn't get it started, so we hired a car for the 3 days we were there.

The next morning, we all went flying south along the Wild Coast to spot sardines which were making their annual migration up the coast. They had already reached Ramsgate, and there were more further south. I took some aerial video footage and was amazed to see the sharks swimming around in the shoals, particularly in those right on the beach where people were catching the sardines!!! They had no idea sharks were just a few metres from them! André let me fly the plane back to Margate. It's a very easy plane to handle, must easier than the trike. All the steep turns while I was filming left me feeling a bit airsick, so I stayed at the airport while Jeff took his mom for her flight.
I had contacted a colleague at work to tell her about the sardines, and her and cameraman were already on their way down to do a news piece for that night. They came to the airport to collect my tape with the aerial shots on it. Later André and Jeff flew further down the WIld Coast and saw many more huge shoals of sardines and thousands of sharks after them. I was still feeling a bit sick, so I stayed at the airport. Later that afternoon we asked a young pilot to take us for a ride in the twin engine Cessna he was flying for aerial surveys. It had an enormous Leica camera mounted in the floor. I have never seen a camera so huge, about half a metre square with another large memory cabinet for storing the digital photos. Because it was a company plane, he only took us for a 12 minute flip, which was enough, just for the experience. It was so funny how we got the ride... André asked in a loud voice who the pilot was who was flying the Cessna parked on the apron at the airport. And as there was only one other person on the deck with us, he said he was. André then just asked him to take us for a flip. I don't think he could say no. We had also asked a helicopter pilot for a ride they day before. He was checking Eskom power lines and said he'd take us when he returned form the inspection. We waited on the deck until the sun set, but we didn't see him again!
During Thursday night a south wester buster came up and we were worried we wouldn't be able to fly back to Grass Roots in the morning... well not that worried!! It subsided by day break so we had a nice light tail wind home.
Back at Grass Roots we washed the planes and got ready for our next adventure - the annual Battlefields Fly-in at Dundee.

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