A SLIM LOGBOOK - JOHAN WALDEN
T HE HA NG A R R AT V OYA GE (PART 2)
In case you missed it, Part 1 was the first leg of a 1600nm trip my buddy Sean and I were doing around the country to build experience in the art of going from A to B in a very noisy and fun (and slightly expensive!) way. SEAN AND I WERE ENTERING the dusty expanse of the Karoo enroute to Beaufort West, right where we left off in last month’s story. Our second attempt to leave Morningstar Airfield 45 minutes earlier was going much better than yesterday’s when the weather sent us running for home with our tails between our legs. The Jabiru 430’s engine was purring and we had beautifully clear skies.
A FOILED ATTEMPT The furthest point of our trip was to be Pretoria’s Wonderboom Airport– by far the furthest either of us had flown, and certainly the busiest. On the chart, Johannesburg’s airspace looked like a giant spider’s web containing a seemingly impenetrable maze of corridors and routes beneath the TMA where all the big boys flew. But after yesterday’s foiled attempt to get underway, our ‘Jabbi’ just wasn’t going to make it all the way there before the weather closed in. We’d lost a big slice of the trip, but I couldn’t help feeling waves of relief. Today we would go as far as Bloemfontein. Then tomorrow we’d fly westwards to Kimberley, Upington, and
I R E A L I S ED WE WER E GOI NG I NT O T HE S P I DER ’ S WEB
This was our crack at getting out of the “cabbage patch”, as my instructor put it, and going further than just the usual breakfast run destinations on repeat. If hour building for a CPL, one might as well make it interesting and actually learn something.
42
April 2021
