Tuesday 20th December 2016

Total with G-RALA 6,736nm

Total commercial 456nm

Total in other aircraft 853nm

The end of the adventure can be summarised in various statistics, we flew 6,736 nautical miles which translates into a slightly more impressive 7751 statute miles or 12,400 kilometres. The highest we flew was 8700 feet but at a temperature of 35 degrees that was a density altitude of 12,800 feet. The longest leg was from Zanzibar to Songwe at about 430nm, hottest was a recorded was 40 degrees in Nairobi.

But, that is of course is like having a tour guide that insists on giving you the height and weight of every historic monument but no sense of time or place.

We’ve been privileged to have flown a narrow strip down Africa, a lesson in both physical and social geography. We have hopefully honed our flying skills and got a new found respect for those of you flying fixed wings. We have encountered weather, poor visibility, fuel that looked like cooking oil and all sorts of air traffic control. I think I’ve just about mastered the overhead join. But, that also is only part of the picture. We have flown with a fascinating mix of people, I can safely say that no one was dull. In fact several would be worthy of an entire novel and any subsequent adventures will be the poorer for the absence of any member of that company.

The R44 performed pretty well, rather better than expected. If I was to give advice to anyone attempting the same trip it would be; check your weight, balance and power limits religiously and in turbulent conditions slow down and reduce power. Anywhere north of Kenya you are going to have a problem procuring Avgas. In general you will have a far easier and less challenging time in a turbine helicopter. There were times that we were jealous of the R66 mainly because of its superior weight carrying capacity and its aircon. It is without doubt the superior cruising machine. But, the R44 is fun, even at 40 degrees and 8,000 feet.

The adventure ended with a dinner which took place in one of Cape Towns less popular tourist sites, the Castle of Good Hope. A 17th century star fort built by the Dutch in the 1700's and now 56th out of 200 things to do in Cape Town. The staff appeared to be a bit nonplussed by having to cater for 100 visitors. The canapés solemnly handed round on trays were wrapped humbugs and biltong so chewy it could have been used as floor tiles. Once inside the building we all sat down expectantly at a long table wondering what could be served next. The main course started off as chicken and rice at one end of the table and metamorphosed into lamb chop and mashed potato at the other. It was difficult to say who was the most fortunate. But, somehow the evening was the better for it, maybe if it had gone smoothly it would not have been in keeping.

The most important part of the evening was the awarding of awards. Nick and Lita of team Alaska who had endured every grotty hotel and tent, performed at every air show, impromptu or otherwise and been appreciative of each new vista got the well deserved Spirit of the Rally award. Pedro who wowed us with his flying skills got the Bremont watch on the basis of some sort of point system drawn up by the organisers. How it was worked out no one knew but it came up with the right result. The crew of the Antonov received a vulture made out of coat hangers!

The final word is that Paddy and I had a lesson in a Cessna 152 at Stellenborsch airfield this morning and the helicopter is to be boxed up from Maun and shipped to Durban and on back to the UK.

That’s all folks. Of course there is a whole other story to be told about the characters involved but maybe when the dust has settled.

The next flying adventure will be in Namibia when we have got our fixed wing licences. I’ve got my eye on a nice little zebra striped plane.

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London to Cape Town by Heli: Conclusion was originally published in Helisafari Africa on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Nautical miles 263. Landings Plettenberg, Stellenbosch. << | <.

This was the end of the line, the last leg and the hoped for reuniting of all the aircraft. A number had not made it to Plettenberg as they’d been delayed by the repairs in Blue Mountain and others by the weather in the Karoo. But a large welcoming committee was expected at the final airfield and there was a certain amount of pressure on everyone to turn up.

There have been various memorable flights on this trip some for location, some for events and others for scenery. This was one was the latter. The coastal belt which runs from Plettenberg to Cape Town is characterised by the fynbos or fine bush, strictly speaking this is lowland fynbos. Visually the vegetation appears to be pressed against the cliff edges like a fine weave green carpet. It comprises the richest and smallest of the worlds biomes and is the source of many of the plants we routinely buy at the garden centres in Europe. It is sensationally beautiful and we managed to persuade the Cessna to fly at somewhere below its normal height to get a better view. The Pipistrel flew low enough over the sea to play with pods of dolphins and whales, or so they say!

We were the first to land at Stellenbosch and there were crowds of people, tents and a whole traffic jam of classic cars from the Crankhandle Club. In the baking heat we waited for the arrival of the other planes. The first of the vintage planes was the Bucker, D-EEEK, the one that ATC the length of Africa failed to pronounce. It’s the number of echos that foxes them, then the Waco and the Pipistrel with its new propeller. Next was a wave of Tiger Moths, followed by the Travel Airs and the Stampe.

Suddenly it was all over and nothing much to do but wander between the planes feeling slightly jealous at not to having an aircraft to pose beside. The day got hotter and hotter and the spectators were driven to hide under any available shade. A Jet Ranger fitted with a stabilised camera flew over head and eventually the vintage planes were persuaded to take to the air again for one last photo opportunity flying around Table Mountain. This was a mixed success as the formation broke up in disarray due to a confusion between left and right and up and down.

I suspect that the end of any adventure is a bit anti-climactic for the participants and so it was. The sense of achievement and relief would not kick in until the next day. So we all got on the bus and were driven to the Cape Town waterfront and that was that. Christmas was beginning to intrude on peoples’ thoughts. Real life was waiting in the wings.

Day 41: Plettenberg to Stellenbosch was originally published in Helisafari Africa on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Nautical miles 250. Landings Gariepdam, Plettenburg. << | < | >

Woke early in the curious Dutch ghost town for what has proved to be our penultimate breakfast buffet. The rays of the rising sun had forced its way through the bedroom blinds with all the force of the laser that attempts to emasculate Sean Connery in Dr No.

We bumped our way back to the airfield hoping that the nights storms had not wrecked havoc on the parked planes. Some of the available tie downs were lumps of concrete which hang down from the wings and given the right input could probably start swinging like pendulums.

Today we will make it to the southern edge of the Indian Ocean by cadging a lift in the Bushcats. These are seriously cool light sports aircraft. They are built in SA and designed to operate in remote areas on dirt strips with easily repaired components. I had been angling to get a ride in one ever since first seeing them in Greece. After the nights storms the sky was clear and the air still and flying over the diminished waters of the reservoir the previously submerged hills looked slightly sinister. The water, even though the sky was blue, was quite black and oily. Once away from Gariepdam the land reverts to the dry landscape of the Karoo and in a Bushcat, which is not speedy, we crawled over this ancient geography like insects over a page.

The route was crossed by narrow ranges of mountains, as you fly over each one you think that behind the next might be the sea. But, they march on in increasing height all the way to the coast. I had a go at flying the bushcat at various points during the flight. This is evidenced by the fact that if I go back and look at the skydemon track log, I am all over the place. I found it very difficult to keep straight, the inputs for a helicopter are very small whereas you seemed to need to be a lot meatier with the plane. Thus, a side wind very quickly pushed me 3 degrees off track and you needed quite a lot of work on the pedals to keep to the correct heading. In a heli in turbulence the aim is not to over compensate whereas in the plane you seem to have to wrestle your way to straight and level. I suspect it’s all a lot easier for you folks with autopilot but a bushcat doesn’t have such niceties.

The Karoo does have towns such as Oudtshoorn, which were founded in the early 19th century. At this time the area was filled with ostrich farms and such was the demand for the feathers to trim clothes that a number of ‘feather millionaires’ were created. In fact there were two ostrich booms one in the late 1900's and another just before the First World War. Nowadays, the millionaires drawn to the area do so to commune with nature in various yoga retreats or buy up old properties to experience the feeling of being off the grid.

The last range to the north of Plettenberg is Tsitsitkamma, after this final barrier to rain the hills are covered in vineyards and dotted with mansions, there are fields of polo ponies and everyone has a swimming pool. It is a world way from the starkness of the Karoo. This is South Africa’s Home Counties. The airfield at Plettenberg, as we have come to expect in SA was pretty relaxed, in fact so relaxed that a couple of skydivers were landing at the same time as the aircraft.

As we tied down a strange chimera between a boat and a hang glider trundled past. Watching it taxiing up the runway I expected that such an un-aerodynamic craft would need at least two thirds of the runway. But in only a few metres it had taken off, disappearing towards the sea, looking like something from a Disney movie.

All the pilots who’d made it to Plettenberg were also anxious to make it to the water. We wanted to dip our toes in the water of the Indian Ocean. Which we did. It was extremely cold, something had definitely changed between here and the two thousand miles since Zanzibar.

Day 40: Gariepdam to Plettenburg was originally published in Helisafari Africa on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Nautical miles 304. Landings Blue Mountain, Gariepdam. << | < | >.

The news on the helicopter is that the underwriters still seem confused as to what to do, but it seems increasingly likely, as it only has 30 hours left on the clock before it times out, that they will write it off.

As we no longer have an aircraft we are reduced to hawking ourselves around to try an secure a seat. To do this one has to look as lightly encumbered as possible and preferably quite thin, no one wants to take a fatty with a ruck sack as a passenger.

In the hanger could be heard the sound of welding and an angle grinder. One of the Travel Airs had broken a back wheel the previous day and attempts had been made all night to fix it. As all Travel Airs stick together that reduced the number of available seats for the trip south. Eventually Paddy was offered a seat in the Pipistrel and I got in the Cessna 206. The latter seemed very lux after the helicopter it has squishy leather seats and aircon. I still find it disconcerting the way those with autopilots just take their hands off the controls and start fiddling with gps devices.

Once you leave the idyllic valley of the Blue Mountain airstrip the countryside is densely populated. We were after all only 40 minutes commuting distance from Johannesburg. Between us and the city were the towns such as Soweto most other created during the apartheid era to house Indians and other specified peoples according to the precise government classifications of the day. These towns are now large and merging together at their margins. The landscape is also characterised by the slime dams. These strange hills are created from the waste products of gold mining and with their white coloration and square shape they look as if they should form the foundation of some monolithic and never completed building. The lurid colours of the water run off at the base of these structures suggests that they probably contain toxic material. Gold mining is a notoriously environmentally dirty process as it uses cyanides to extract the metal from the ore.

Once we had got well South of Johannesburgs airspace we turned to follow the Vaal river towards Parys. Along the river were large and individual mansions. Every building designed to a particular whim of its creator. There were ultra modern concrete blocks, glass edifices,thatched neo-Tudor, Victorian and Georgian rectories, Safari lodges and even one burrowed into a cliff. But all are kitted out with swimming pools and speed boats.

At Parys was a small flying club with a thatched control tower and a restaurant where you can get bacon and eggs and Avgas. Not dissimilar to the small flying clubs dotted around the UK. After refuelling both pilots and planes the next stop was Gariepdam.

Once away from the Vaal river the land becomes extremely dry. This is the country known as the Karoo where every individual sheep needs 10 hectares of grazing. Over the past couple of years there has been a drought and looking down it would seem that a stocking level of 1 per 10 hectares might be insufficient. As a result a number of the farms have become game farms with wildebeest, springbok, zebra and kudu which better able to cope with the dry conditions. These animals live within 10,000 to 70,000 hectare fenced reserves. They then become the attraction at private safari parks. Some of these animals are kept to provide a disease free population to stock the wild parks and some become canned game for sportsman.

As we got closer to Gariepdam thunder cells were beginning to gather 20 miles ahead. The Cessna 206 is equipped with a storm scope which measures electrical activity up to 50 miles ahead and we could see that quite a storm was gathering. By the time the airfield was in sight there was visible lightening all around us and the turbulence had increased such that the runway instructions changed from 010 to 15 and back again while we were on downwind.

We were relieved to get wheels down, but of course we were the vanguard and a number of the slower planes were behind us. The clapboard club house could have been anywhere in the Midwest of America. The controller sat in a rocking chair the wooden veranda while a small dog with its ears blown backwards looked out across the dusty apron. We joined him, sitting on rocking chairs looking out at the dark sky and listening out for our colleagues on the radio. As it was the Pipistrel got in and another of the Cessnas. But the other aircraft had holed up 100nm away waiting for the storms to clear.

Gariepdam itself is a strange place, its a Dutch holiday village somehow marooned in the dead centre of SA. It contains a number of small red roofed self catering villas at the edge of the dam. But, due to the drought the dam is only 30% full and the sailing boats in the little marina are contained in a shrinking pool of water.

We walked down the hill from our hotel, also Dutch, and noted that the community so small that every car that passed with a white driver would wave. Maybe they assumed some acquaintance or maybe it was just acknowledgement of the fact we were also white. That evening the hotel was struck by lightening violent enough to blow a hole in the masonry. Tomorrow we fly to Plettenberg.

Day 39: Blue Mountain to Gariepdam was originally published in Helisafari Africa on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

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Woke up this morning feeling rather smug at having opted for a bed rather than a tent. By the time we got to the airfield everyone was already up and the clothes draped over the wing struts implied the night had been damp.

The backdrop to the airfield is formed by the Magaliesburg hills, which claim to be the oldest mountains in the world, containing as they do rocks that are 3 billion years old, although one could quibble that the mountains themselves were created only 2 billion years ago by a volcanic eruption. They have two distinct sides one gently sloping and one steep with eroded tops like broken molars.

At the furthest end of these cliffs is a rare wild population of Cape Vultures. These birds have always had a bad press, even Charles Darwin considered them disgusting. But, now they are critically endangered, and not just in Africa, numbers are impacted by a number of different threats. They are poisoned by the modern wormers used on farm animals, they get entangled in electricity cables, they are shot and poisoned by poachers and they are used in various forms of traditional medicine. It is thought that a vultures brain dried and smoked in a cigarette will convey clairvoyant powers. Useful if true but not a tested concept. If they become extinct as a species we will miss their clean up role. Their outrageously strong stomach acid can digest the most rancid carcass and protect the surroundings from botulism and anthrax.

I took a trip to visit a vulture centre close to the airfield in Haartespoort run by an extraordinarily dedicated woman. Kerrie Wolter has made it her mission to try and save these birds from extinction. She shares her home with about 250 of these huge birds and runs tagging, breeding and education programmes.

They are fed once a week with fresh pig carcasses, which they reduce to a neatly picked skeleton in about six days. With their curious hunchbacked shuffling gait there is definitely something of the demeanour of an undertaker about these birds, in fact the collective noun for a group of vultures is a wake. Kerrie runs a vulture feeding station and it was fascinating, if a bit gruesome to watch a large number of them squabbling over a disembowelled pig. One running after the other as he hopped away with a piece of intestine dangling from his beak. Not an easy animal to love.

Meanwhile on returning to the airfield the number of aircraft lining the strip had doubled. There were examples of machines from the 30's, 40's, 50's and 60's. Maybe it’s just as well we didn’t have the heli as we would have had to hide it round the corner it would have looked totally analogous.

Everyone who’d come with a plane was anxious to show off, so as families sat on the grass antique Tiger Moths and Stearman executed low passes metres from their picnics. Then there were the display teams; a group of three Harvard T2's performed a virtuoso display of precision flying. The sound these machines make goes through your whole body the speed of the propeller exceeds the speed of sound.

There was also a team of Zlin’s from the 1960's which performed a series of passes down the runway with one wing apparently 3metres from the ground.

A parachutist was taken up in first a Waco and then a Travel Air and plummeted literally hitting the ground running. Maybe in account of his very small parachute, I would classify it more as a kite.

It wasn’t until the sun had set that the last pilot reluctantly called it a day. The guinea fowl could once again wander on the runway and the barbecues were fired up once more.

Happily this time the cooking had been delegated to third parties as several people had made themselves ill eating semi-cooked boerewors the previous night.

In the darkness we struck up conversation with a fascinating man who took a rather direct approach to conservation. He was flying on poacher patrols in his own Bell 206 over the Kruger. He was something of a one man animal rescue service. The pictures on his phone were gruesome images of rhinos being dehorned with chainsaws and left to die. He flys in vets and even flys out orphaned animals in the back of the helicopter and has just taken delivery of an armour plated Hughes that is waiting certification in Maun. Tokkie Botes (cool name) is flying some 50 hours a month and having sufficient impact to push groups of poachers out of an area. Of course they just resurface somewhere else. But maybe the ability to get people in to investigate the crime scene fast might aid in detection.

Day 38: Blue Mountain Valley airstrip (West Rand) was originally published in Helisafari Africa on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Nautical miles 36. Landings Johannesburg, Blue Mountain Valley.
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Late last night the underwriter responded to inform us that the helicopter had to remain in Maun until signed off by a UK engineer or an exemption given by the UK CAA. This is a disappointing decision as it potentially strands the machine in Botswana for weeks and will could even result in it being a write off. The only amazing piece of luck is that the accident happened in the only place in the last 5 weeks that had a Robinson centre. Helicopter Horizons have been amazingly helpful and will house G-RALA in their hanger for as long as it takes.

The teams will be coming into Lanseria, an airfield just to the north-east of Johannesburg. It is a big GA centre in South Africa and also performs as a port of entry. Thus our plan was to take an Uber out of town to Lanseria and try to cadge a lift with one of the planes.

The trip out of town took us through the seemingly endless Johannesburg suburbs. Road after road lined with large villas on acre plots surrounded by tall walls and topped with 6 or 7 strands of electric wire. You could be driving through a particularly paranoid corner of Cobham until you see a diminutive black man pushing a cart piled high with recycled cardboard or the groups young men recumbent on the roadside.

As we approached Lanseria we looked up and spotted one of the biplanes turning onto finals and it felt good to be able to rejoin the crews. Lanseria is so geared up to the private market that it even has separate gates for GA aviation. Out on the apron all the planes were gathered, each one surrounded by little piles of luggage and the Caravan by a very large heap of various sized cases. It looked like we would be settling down for our usual long occupation of the tarmac. But, no, customs appeared to be a very well oiled process. It was only later we discovered that a lot of people had worked very hard in the background to get everyone through the importation documentation.

Our more immediate problem was how to get a lift from here to the overnight stop in Blue Mountain Valley, a private airstrip. A South African Waco had joined the party owned by Nico and Paddy was offered a seat in this. Strictly speaking it was more like half a seat. I was similarly given a space, sharing the front of the red German Waco. I found it very difficult to get in or indeed out of the Waco with any degree of elegance. I had to be coached on which leg to put in first, get it wrong and you end up jammed head first under the dashboard or facing backwards and once your companion gets in it is pretty snug. During takeoff and landing you have to wind your legs out of the way of the pedals and the joystick so as not to interfere with the dual controls. But the flight was exhilarating as we bounced down the runway and headed into the Magaliesburg hills to our overnight stop.

Blue Mountain would rate highly on the list of paradisical sites for aviators. The grass strip is set in a long valley between two low mountain ranges. The owner is a passionate collector of old aircraft and has many beautiful machines housed in several hangers, one of which is the only hanger I have ever seen with polished parquet flooring.

That evening we were given an extraordinary aerobatic display which continued as the moon rose over one end of the valley. While at the other end the cumulus clouds were illuminated by almost continuous sheet lightening.

Supper was a brae a South African take on a fondu party. The barbecue is lit, everyone has a pair of tongs and a selection of meat. You then occupy a portion of the coals and get cooking, jealously guarding the hottest coals. Vegetables play only a small bit part in the proceedings. In fact in South African food is definitely geared towards carnivore rather than vegetarian tastes.

The choice of accommodation was a tent or a lodge. Viewing the rather threatening cumulus clouds we opted for the lodge -good choice for around 2.00am the storm hit the valley. Those in the tents were in for a damp night.

Day 37: Johannesburg to Magaliesburg was originally published in Helisafari Africa on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Nautical miles 456. Landings Maun, Johannesburg.
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Day 35 started with a degree of optimism and faint hysteria caused by lack of sleep. All night there was either a rave or maybe a riot going on just outside our room which was eventually curtailed by a terrific downpour. I spent the remainder of the night lying awake imagining the helicopter blowing round the airport apron.

We got to Maun international at 6.00am when it opened, walked through the puddles to Horizon Helicopters and chucked our stuff in the heli. It is quite novel to do an A check on a machine with so many battle scars, any one of which would normally cause us to run to Dave, chief engineer at HQ where it normally lives. However, yesterday both the Horizon Robinson R44 engineer and the underwriter’s own loss adjuster in Johannesburg agreed that, despite the damage, G-RALA was safe enough to fly to Lanseria near Johannesburg for further technical assessment by underwriters.

First hiccup was that when we called for start to fly to Nata, tower said they had no record of our flight plan. It had been lodged with SkyDemon the night before and acknowledged, but it seems that only an actual paper form filled in at the airfield office will suffice. A system thus originally designed for safety very quickly becomes a danger, as the air tempertaure and associated turbulence rise rapidly.

As I waited outside the terminal I rescued a scarab beetle from a puddle, three times, in the hope of increasing our karma. But, it continued to strike out for the depths so I gave up trying to intervene in its death wish. There are a number of insects that I’ve regularly seen while waiting on concrete aprons from Egypt to South Africa. One is a fast and black ground beetle the other is a very large millipede, black with yellowish legs, some of these beasts are nearly as long as an iPhone. I suspect the beetle of being carnivorous but a millipede only eats plant matter, so the airport apron seem a curious and uncomfortable place to make home.

By the time the flight plan was successfully lodged for a second time, the weather was beginning to look quite threatening. But, we figured we would probably be able to circumvent it. However, after we had reach cruise speed, we felt there was more vibration in the main rotor and that we should return for a further inspection. In the U.K. we’d probably have pushed on, but rattled by recent events we decided to turn back. Discretion being the better part of valour, as they say. The fact that the accident occurred at a place which had the only R44 blade rebalancing kit since we left the UK was serendipidous in the extreme.

So we were back at Horizon working on a plan B, which was to ask the engineer, Matt, to come in to rebalance the blades. But, he’d gone away to a friends wedding. Plan C was to find a safety pilot to fly with us to Nata. There had been a candidate but now it was too late as the airplane that would have flown him back to Maun had already left. Plan D was to ferry the heli to the loss adjuster who was waiting at an airfield just outside Johannesburg. By a stroke of luck, Horizon employed an EASA-rated pilot with thousands of hours experience, who was willing to fly it all the way to Lanseria, just outside Joberg which meant we could get ourselves in a position to rejoin the rally rather than spend another night in Maun.

It was impossible to get any kind of decisions out of the underwriters back in London, especially over a weekend. At one point they suggested a plan E which was to put the heli on a truck and drive it into South Africa. The roads in Botswana are so bad I’m not sure it would arrive before 2017.

So here we are trying to get a decision from the underwriters as the hours tick by. We may have to instigate plan F which is to fly back to Maun tomorrow and fly the heli ourselves out of Botswana after getting the blades balanced. But, that will put us well behind the rest of the rally.

Impressions of Johannesburg is that more than any other place we have stayed, it has the trappings of a modern city. We drove in from the airport on dual carriageways with European style signage. But, buildings that from a distance look like normal city high rises are quite run down when you get closer, places that I suspect once had central aircon are now barnacled with exteriorly fitted machines and many of the windows are broken. Every house, shop or office however small has bars on windows and doors and nearly all are surrounded by electrified fences topped with razor wire. This city is certainly worried by its inhabitants. In the smarter more suburban areas these security precautions are enhanced with notices warning of armed response teams. At road junctions men with plastic bags will take rubbish from your car for a few rand or sell you warm soft drinks and many look quite destitute wrapped in blankets sitting in doorways. However, there does also,seem to be a dynamic middle class, new modern blocks being built and the restaurants and shopping malls are full.

So here we sit, in a pretty much empty hotel,surrounded by agapanthus waiting for a decision from someone in Surrey.

Day 35 & 36 Maun to Johannesburg was originally published in Helisafari Africa on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

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‘The morning after the night before’

Woke up this morning feeling pretty sad about the whole situation. After the furore of dealing with the situation last night, taking pictures and ringing the insurance company the full import of the accident was yet to sink in. But, now as the assembled company prepares for to fly off to Nata it looks like we’ll be left behind. We have been kindly offered seats in various aircraft but it seems more sensible to stay here to assess the damage. Also as we cleared a lot of stuff out of the heli we are no longer accompanied by two neat bags instead we have a multiplicity of objects retrieved from the heli and accommodated in hotel laundry bags.

Luckily here in Maun, unlike anywhere else we have passed through on this whole trip, there is a flight centre with a number of R44's and accompanying engineering facilities. Last night we had a lot of help from Matt at Helicopter Horizons to get the heli free of the Tiger moth. This morning the Tiger was in a hanger and it looks as if everything is repairable. The only delay will be in finding the necessary expertise as wood, steel struts and wing fabric is not too difficult to come by. The R44 is another matter. If any component is out of limits it will have to be replaced and as no one holds stock, it will have to be shipped from Robinson in California.

We watched the other 5 aircraft depart for their next destination, but there was too much to sort out here to desert the helicopter to its fate. First job was to tow it from one side of the airfield to the other and in crossing the apron it was apparent that we weren’t the only aircraft effected. There are several other sorry casualties, Cessnas flung on their backs like beetles. Apparently this is the 5th incident of weather causing damage at the airport in as many weeks. The last incident caused 5 planes to be written off when the metal cable they were attached to snapped in the wind.

We installed ourselves in the Helicopter Horizons offices, great wifi, and very helpful people. Mathew White the engineer has had a good look over the machine. It appears to have a number of superficial bashes and scrapes but it doesn’t look as if anything is out of limits. Matt has tap tested the blades and measured the size and depth the various abrasions and it appears to be okay. The only obvious issue is the rear rotor guard which is a bit bent. But, it’s a time limited component therefore up to the discretion of the pilot. We did a a test flight hovering around outside the hanger and it felt much as normal. So we were up for flying it Nata his afternoon. However, we have now run into delays with the loss adjuster, we can’t go anywhere until he gets back to us and so far he hasn’t. Plan B is to hire a small plane and a pilot in South Africa and complete the rally that way. We cannot fly a SA registered helicopter on a British or FAA licence so even if we hired a heli we would have to sit out the flying all a bit disappointing to say the least.

We have retired to a hotel just outside Maun, well more of a motel and are in the bar drinking warm beer being tortured by a recording of Christmas melodies played on an electric guitar with a maraca accompaniment.

I am on to my second bottle of mosquito repellant. Good news is the room has aircon and the loss assessor has said it’s fine to fly the heli on to Johannesburg. So the game is afoot and we will leave at 6.00am tomorrow to get going before the thermals build up, next stop Limpopo.

Day 34, Maun was originally published in Helisafari Africa on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Nautical miles 224. Landings Kasane, Selinda, Maun.
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Refuelling 1

Birds we were warned would be the biggest risk of this flight via the Okovango. We were told horror stories of pilots who had been blinded by by storks or lost a leading edge to an eagle. The prescribed avoidance procedure is to pull up as birds tend to dive. The pilots in the open cockpit planes are all donning helmets.

We started deliberately early as the air is still and clear and most of the larger birds are sitting around waiting for the thermals to develop later in the day. The flight from Kasane to Selinda airstrip through the Chobe national park was an incredible experience. Later in the year all this area will be covered in water as the flood waters overspill from the Okavango river and will be transformed by 11 cubic kilometres of water making its way down from Angola. We flew over herds of zebra, many hundreds of animals grazing on the sparse grass of the pan.

The whole delta is dependant on rainfall that falls in Angola and this year the rains are late. As the land became damper close to the remaining river courses, suddenly there were elephants. At first one spotted huge single bulls cooling off in the marshy pools and then small herds crossing the riverlets. As you got better at spotting we saw family groups sheltering in the shade under trees and large herds, maybe 40 animals in total, parading through the marshy grass.

We stopped for breakfast at the Selinda strip. At the end of the sand runway was a tent used by one of the safari camps, the 14 of us consumed a large lump of parmesan, a bar of chocolate, loaf of bread, packets of salami x3 and I believe there was some sort of cheese but at 35 degrees it had adopted a weird consistency like wallpaper paste.

The trip from Selinda to Maun was equally dramatic. I swopped into the Pipistrel to see how the other side lived. It takes a bit of getting used to not having any forward visibility, you have to have faith that the runway in front of you is straight and level as it is completely obscured on take off. Once in the air the pipistrel is very quiet compared to the heli and also lacks the constant vibration. But, after a couple of hours the different motion from the wing versus the rotor began to make me feel sick. Interestingly the pilot who swopped into the heli felt similarly nauseous. We must have all developed our own individual tolerances. I calculate we have flown around 75 hours since leaving Denham.

We landed at Maun which is a very busy little airport supporting as it does the tourist industry in the delta. We left the heli lined up with the planes and set off for the lodge imagining nothing more exciting than a mokoro trip up river.

After lunch there was a thunderstorm and with the extreme heat and humidity of the afternoon it was a relief to see rain. But just as we were dozing off listening to the reenergised frogs, we were told that we had to go to the airfield immediately as there had been an acident involving the heli and a plane. All the way to Maun in the back of the truck we were trying to imagine what could have happened. As we got closer to the airport it became apparent that the rain that had fallen at the lodge was but nothing compared to what had happened here. The roads were feet under water, signs and small shops were blown away, fences crushed and damp donkeys wandered along the pavement. Once outside the terminal we could see that a small crowd of people in fluorescent jackets were in the area where the heli was parked. Close to the object of their interest could be seen, our helicopter and one of the biplanes had become locked together.

An intense squall generated by the storm had caused the Tiger Moth to break its tie downs and career straight into GRALA lodging itself under the tail. At this point it looks as if the force against the tail had been sufficient to lift up the left hand skid and trap the bottom wing of the Tiger underneath it, pinning it down and preventing further movement.

Trying to separate the two aircraft was difficult as the rear rotor guard of the helicopter had gouged through the wooden super structure of the Tiger and had to be unbolted. Then the heli had to be carefully lifted off the trapped wing using wheels without causing any accessory damage. By now it was dark and there was little we could do to assess the damage until the next day. But at the moment it looks as if we have reached the end of the line and it is unlikely we will get to Cape Town, leastways not in this heli.

Day 33: Kasane to Maun was originally published in Helisafari Africa on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Nautical miles 54. Landings Livingstone, Kasane.
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Today the Rally was hoping to get a low level clearance to fly over the falls with the biplanes, obviously a big photo opportunity. But as it transpired they could only get permission to be not below 1500 feet agl, which wasn’t going to produce the pictures they wanted.

We have made the decision not to go to Bulawayo but instead to fly the short hop across the border into Botswana with the R66, the Pipistrel and the Waco. There we will join up with two of the Tiger Moths and hopefully fly across the delta to Limpopo camp to meet the rest of the crew in three days time.

We were a little concerned that the velvet monkeys, that inhabited the hotel gardens in large numbers, might have decided to peel the cover off or maybe the zebras would chew the floats. But, all looked as normal on the ‘check A’.

We flew for a little way up the Zambezi before turning on track for Kasane. At the border the we turned more south westerly to follow the Chobe river into Kasane. We got a very chilled reception at Botswana immigration and for the first time crossed a border without paying a visa fee since leaving the schengen zone.

Later that afternoon we were floating down the Chobe river drinking gin and watching crocodiles chewing up a dead buffalo. The Chobe national park has one of the largest concentrations of game in Africa. This evening we could only experience one small part of what is a huge park, namely the area abutting the river. But we saw hippos, ibis, stork and ducks.

There were zebra, Cape buffalo and in the distance lechwe and lots of crocs. The dry season is just coming to an end and the first rains have meant that the elephants had moved inland from the river to eat some of the fresher vegetation. So I still haven’t seen an elephant. Many of the pilots have claimed to have seen both elephants and giraffes. But, I can only reliably report a siteing of camels and wild donkeys in a desert many weeks ago.

Throughout the park the elephant damage to trees is very visible and from the river we could see areas where every tree has either been pushed over by elephants or was dead due to ring barking. The park has a healthy elephant population and but these numbers have been swelled by refugee populations fleeing war in Angola and Congo and poaching in Zimbabwe with resultant pressure on habitat. Bret and Sarah who fly the Tiger moth A2-PIX are very involved with the charity elephantswithoutborders.org which has recently conducted the largest pan-African aerial survey of elephant numbers confirming the dramatic decline in elephant numbers. It was also able to identify poaching hot spots by counting numbers of carcasses. A carcass ratio of more than 8% when compared to live numbers is considered indicative of poaching. The worst areas for this activity are Angola and Democratic Republic of Congo and Tanzania.

Seen from a boat on an idyllic evening, surrounded by such a vibrant ecosystem it is easy to forget that we have flown over thousands of miles of dry scrub and desert with barely a bird in the sky.

Day 32: Livingstone to Kasane was originally published in Helisafari Africa on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.