Savage BARN FIND IN UGANDA Part 1 C raig L ang
During early October 2019, while pottering around the hangar at our base in Kwazulu Natal at Eva’s Field, my phone rang. The caller, Noel, asked if I was the South African dealer for the Savage range of aircraft as he might have an interesting proposition.
Driving through Kajjansi Village to find the forgotten Savage.
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OEL said he is an Aircraft Maintenance Engineer (AME) who contracts to various conservation organisations around Africa, doing maintenance and repairs on their antipoaching aircraft. He had done some repairwork on a Savage in Uganda that had been ground-looped back in 2015 and had been offered the aircraft in lieu of other work done for this particular group in the past. Without vast experience on the Savages, Noel asked whether I would consider going to Uganda to inspect the aircraft with him and see if it was viable to fly it back to SA. I agreed – on the condition I had an option of buying the aircraft, should it indeed be a worthwhile proposition. We met the following week in the airport in Entebbe, Uganda, and spent three nights in a little hotel called the Mak-Queen in a
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After standing in an open shed for 4 years the Savage was a sorry sight.
