Okay so we are super excited. We're about to depart on a new big adventure
for the weekend and we're flying to Hazyview airfield and staying at Little Pilgrims which is
at the airfield and from there we will explore the most scenic places in South Africa like Graskop
God's Window and the Blyde Canyon. As a matter of matter of fact I think Blyde Canyon is probably
the most iconic scenic spot in South Africa. But we'll see and we'll give you more information on
what exactly our plans are during the course of this video. Uh so we've done the briefing before
but basically um we're gonna take off in that direction and if we have a problem I'm gonna
firstly if it's possible I'm gonna try to land back on the runway if there's enough runway left
um if there's not enough runway left and there's a complete engine failure
then I'm just we're gonna land more or less straight ahead to the left or right I'm gonna
choose the smoothest surface to land on. A couple of things, I might ask you to open
your door and I might ask you to grab the first aid kit. It's under your water bottle
Airspeed's alive, RPM...good
I can we we are heavy
Okay, but we are also flying
we're going to stay in ground-effect to pick up speed
Okay, we're climbing out
Just want to gain some height before we turn out
Now we're getting the updrafts! So guess what, we do not have a head-wind
Lovely!
True airspeed 97, ground speed 100. So a little bit of a tailwind. So we basically need to clear this ridge in front of us
I think the highest point is something like 7,400 foot more or less to our left
I'm going to try to make it at 8 000.
But the wind is from behind, that means we gonna get updrafts on this side, which is a good thing
So that's gonna help us up and the other side is gonna be downdrafts but then it doesn't matter
If the wind had been from the front and we tried to cross the ridge
that means we're gonna be in downdrafts on the lee side of the mountain
and then you need to be very high or you might not make it over the mountain
It might also be the highest the Bushbaby has ever been
which is 8,100 feet. 8,100 feet and look how close we are to the ground
About just more than a thousand feet AGL and the density altitude at 8,100 feet now is 9,800 feet
Whaaat!
Hazyview traffic, IJC on a left hand downwind for runway 19 full stop landing
All right so we've arrived at Hazyview. We even got hangarage for the plane which is
of course very awesome so uh ja now we're just taking off about his baggage to the
hotel where we're going to stay. I suppose we got a check-in first
and then uh yeah we'll show you a little bit more what this place looks like
You can join us for dinner tonight from seven to nine
We arrived a little early so couldn't check into our room immediately.
The hotel restaurant doesn't serve lunch but we had some drinks and the staff
were kind enough to order us some food from town while we waited for our room to be ready
So this is our room at Little Pilgrims. Very nice! We had some delicious dinner before heading off to
bed to rest for the busy day of flying the next day.
Okay so we're going to do two flights today
this afternoon we're going to explore the Blyde Canyon area but the flight we're going to do this
morning is around the Gods Window, Graskop area so basically uh we are at 1,700 feet at Hazyview
and to get over some of these um areas we need to be at least 7,500 feet so we can't fly
directly there uh we do not have the climb performance, so we're going to do sort of a
zigzag approach to gain height um so we're going to start by just flying to the Injaka dam
then um towards the escarpment and along the escarpment um we're going to try to do it below
the escarpment if the winds are favorable and then we're going to start climbing to
fly around mount Sheba, back overhead Graskop and then back to Hazyview
So this is where she slept last night. Had this huge hangar all for herself
This is actually quite a nice field, but I'll definitely call
this an intermediate field because you see there's a wall right there and there's um
some electric fencing right there so there's no overrun on the sides of the runway
Hazyview traffic IJC lining up for takeoff runway 01
Our RPM is good. Airspeed's alive. I can feel the power
And we're flying. In ground effect
And we're climbing out
Overhead the shopping center
I can definitely feel the extra power being close to sea level
The air is so smooth. Unbelievable
So this is the Injaka dam
Low level traffic Graskop area IJC's a Bushbaby overhead the Injaka dam, 4,500 feet
routing to God's Window, IJC. Ok so there's not a lot of wind um but it does seem to be coming
over the mountain so there might be downdrafts and rotor so we're gonna be careful
um we're not gonna cross it obviously we're gonna fly along the escarpment but if there's a rotor
or downdrafts we just gonna escape down the valley or down this way which is the terrain lowest that way
No downdrafts at all. Might actually be a little updrafts
There's even a few decent spots to land if we have an engine out, over there
We're getting some downdrafts but it's still controllable
Only about 200 feet per minute. Oh nevermind we're climbing
This is absolutely amazing though.
So the Graskop gorge
where they do that uh zip lining and stuff it's just in here
Oh that's pretty cool
I can't go too close but I'll just stay on the edge of the boundary of the reserve but you'll
see it over there now. Maybe we will actually see somebody going off.
Uh I don't...maybe, I don't know
I can't go too close I'll have to turn back
Okay. Oh ya obviously
Obviously because there's a....a wall in front of us. You can see the house there
Oh ya
Not a house, a structure okay oh you can't
Okay ya you can
Uh...NOW
All right now we're gonna head to Mac Mac falls
Uh I think the falls might be over there
Gonna fly a bit this way so we can see it out of your window.
It's supposed to be somewhere just to the right of us
Unless it's not running though
It should be. This area doesn't really dry up that much
Could be oh I think it could be on that side over there.
I can't see it, I'm not really sure what I'm looking out for
There's no water or whatsoever, unless it's that
I don't know. No idea what it looks like.
Right here on my right-hand. See it?
I think it's actually more that way. There's a waterfall in front of us there
Ya that I can see
And we won't be able to uh go straight over the mountain
uh we're going to need to circle a bit...to gain height
I think I'm gonna do a right-hand circle, that way
Then we can see what's over there and we can climb a bit
Okay
Because we still need...1,500 feet before we can clear these uh ridges
We're still climbing at least, about 150 feet per minute, and I'm not full power
Very. All right we can proceed in that direction we're high enough and uh
Mountain flying 101; never cross ridges 90 degrees, like that. Because if you have trouble and you're not high enough
and there's downdrafts, you can't turn around. So always cross at a 45 degrees to the one side
because if you realize you can't make it then you just turn a little bit, and turn back
It's purdy
Ya, no it's a logging area. It's cut
Well, I needed to print this...map
so they needed to chop down that tree so I can print this map
Still.
True story
Okay so all these bald spots is all chopped off, right?
Correct
Ah! Why?
So I can print my map
Ya but there's not gonna be anything left if they're gonna keep on going on
Well I think the majority of these are planted actually. I don't think it's
natural trees. Correct me if I'm wrong but you can see them growing over here, they're definitely planted
and then we're going to do a cliff dive
Yee-haw
So the place we're gonna cliff dive is directly in front of us
We're gonna go down like that and just...
Be ready
I can't go more this direction because this is a nature reserve
wee hew
No cars, no people. Nothing
Whoa, ahhh this is crazy!
Ah!
That was fun!
Hahaha
Okay!
And we couldn't have asked for better weather because if it was very windy
we might not be able to do that uh because there might have been rotor
but that's why I was um I paid a lot of attention to the wind this whole flight
Hazyview traffic IJC final approach runway 19, full stop landing
Still slipping...still slipping
All right so we just got back from our morning flight it was uh very very beautiful we loved it
a lot um yeah so now we are just going to do a couple of things, I need to fuel the airplane so
for this afternoon's flight so we're going to get uh fuel, come back, fuel the plane and then after
that we'll probably just relax a bit till maybe about 3pm this afternoon and we'll come back and
do the afternoon flight to the Blyde Canyon which I think is going to be a very nice one