Air Safari in Africa

Jane Brilliant • March 20, 2020

On safari in the African sky

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So, if you haven’t flown any P.I.C. hours in 21 years and your friends suggest you dust off your 48yo PPL so you can hire a C182 and fly yourself all around southern Africa, what do you say? Painfully for Andrew Nacsa, I said yes. 

After a year of planning and pre-validation of our licences in order to be issued with South African licences, last May the five amigos finally embarked on the adventure of a lifetime. In Cape Town we passed our check flights in possibly the oldest C172 still in existence – the flight was an hour’s memorable scenic jaunt around Table Mountain, the city and harbour, down to the Cape of Good Hope and back over the Stellenbosch vineyards. 

A few days later, we departed Johannesburg in three C182s with a Dutch couple tagging along in a C172. The aero safari lasted 19 days, 13 of which were flying days. Our typical day began pre-dawn with a game drive if we were visiting a game reserve, flying for up to four or five hours, re-fuelling at our destination, relaxing before a dusk game drive which finished with sundowners, then an evening of good food and camaraderie with new and old friends. We learned nifty tricks, such as stacking thorn bushes over the aircraft tyres to discourage hyenas chewing them, taking off from short airstrips at high elevations on lean fuel mixtures, and learning to stay clear of the inevitable dense fog on the Atlantic coast of Namibia. 

Fortunately we had no delayed departures due to lions camping under aircraft wings after enjoying licking the smashed insects on the leading edges. We looked forward to the low level downwind beat ups on strips to scare off massed impala, doing quick tear-drop turns onto a late final before they could re-assemble. One very competent pilot executed a textbook short field obstacle clearance take-off, the obstacle(s) being a loitering family of rhinos. He was thankful they weren’t giraffe. 

We avoided the bush pilots in the Okavango who apparently don’t have radios and get nosebleeds above 200’AGL. We ballooned at dawn in the Namibian desert, hooned on quad bikes through the Skeleton Coast sand dunes, were poled silently through the waterways of the Okavango in mocoros, followed the Okavango upstream and along the Caprivi Strip with frequent low level incursions into Angolan airspace, met elephant, hippo, rhino, lion, giraffe, buffalo, zebra, leopard, cheetah, hyena, jackals, flamingo, crocs, baboons, and all the African antelope from the tiny dik-diks to the mighty kudu. And abundant, wonderful birdlife. 

Would I do it again? In a heartbeat. Our South African licences are valid until Jan 2023. Just a question of funds. 

Jane Brilliant
DDAC Member and volunteer
Some images courtesy of D. Laughton and R. Percival

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