"The way I see it, you can either work for a living or fly airplanes.
Me, I'd rather fly."
The quote above could be improved by adding "in Africa"
to the end of it! Don't tell the boss this, but there are some
days where we think "Man, I'd do this trip for free, I'd come in on my
day off for this, I'm so glad I'm the pilot who got to do this trip..."
It is hard to capture this feeling in pictures, but we've posted a few
flying photos below to try
to show what we mean.
|
Cessna 206 returning from Bwindi |
Murchison Falls on the Nile river, in Murchison National Park |
 |
The top of Murchison Falls, from the air.
On a flight from Kajjansi to Pakuba airstrip the falls are only a
few miles out of the way. So we are lucky to get this awesome
view on a regular basis. From here we usually fly downstream
over the Nile for a few miles, getting a great aerial view of the
elephants, hippos, crocs, and other animals that gather along the
shores of the Nile. |
|
 |
Sitoi Airstrip and tea estate in Western Kenya
This is a new strip for us because we've never had a reason to go there. But a recent trip came up and now we can't wait
to go back. It is short and steep, has three different
surfaces (grass, marrum, and concrete) and four different
slopes. This makes it interesting, fun, and challenging
enough to make you really pay attention. Only the top end-
the concrete and the red patch of marrum, about 2/3 of the way
up the strip- are suitable for landing. The
landing distance is short, but if you hit your desired spot you will
never need to use the brakes due to the slope. (Thanks to McKelvie for insisting that we
keep our short-field and spot landing techniques sharp.)
Most of the strips we fly into are much less exciting and much
more forgiving than this one. |
| Crop spraying- yet another reason to learn to fly tailwheel.
Or maybe the opportunity to fly tailwheel is the reason to want
to spray crops? The duster that we have operated for Tilda
Rice is shown at right. |
 |
 |
Cessna 206 at Bundibugyo, a beautiful grass strip in Western Uganda
near the Congo border. The Rwenzori Mountains lie between
Kampala and Bundi, so you must deviate to the north to get
around them- this makes for a very scenic flight. The
peaks of the Rwenzoris are over 13000 feet, high enough that on
a clear day you can see the glaciers on top. These
mountains also mean that departing in the direction shown in the
photo, or going around in that direction, is strongly
discouraged. |
|
|
