Skubies Blog 2015

 November 2nd Monday

There is no way to sugar coat it, yesterday was a bad day for us.  During the afternoon, a local storm blew up and though it was far from us, did produce freak winds.  One minute it was calm, and the next it was blowing twenty knots.  I wasn't worried then, because Skubie's tie downs have never failed, even in the windy conditions at Rungwa, but when the wind increased even more Anne & started to get worried.  On our way to the airfield, the wind speed must have hit close to 50 knots, but sadly we were too late. We arrived to find Skubie flipped on his back and badly damaged.  The tailplane was completely bent, but that could have been replaced; however, there appeared to be damage to the main wing spar, and on an aircraft, that is normally a write off.  Too upset to write too much on this today, so I will just leave you with the photo..

The wet season has at last begun in Ruaha National Park. With the rain comes the winds and sadly for a small microlight aircraft called Skubie, the end of his flying days. The wind gusting at over 60 knots (120 km per hour), picked him up and turned him completely upside down. As Skubie normally takes off at 40 knots it was obvious he was going to try to fly, even though he was securely tied down. It seemed he wanted to fly solo for once! We the pilot team, with our own charity, Wings Over Africa, have flown over 210 hours for conservation in South Africa and Tanzania, with most of those hours being in Ruaha National Park, are deeply saddened by the loss of Skubie as he was a part of our dream. The loss is not only a loss to us the owners, Annie and Chuck Nagy, but to the Southern Tanzania Elephant Project (www.stzelephants.org), who have been using the plane for monitoring, photography, data collection and general surveillance, to counteract the Elephant poaching, which is rife here.

However, both STEP and Wings Over Africa have found another plane that they wish to purchase which is all weather, more robust and can fly in the wet season, when the poaching is at its worst. They will also be building a hangar for the plane so that a tragedy such as this does not happen again

We are now looking for sponsors or donations no matter how small, to enable us to raise the US $30,000 needed to buy the plane and build the hangar. If you wish to help STEP protect elephants in Ruaha National Park, please contact anne@allsorts.com.sg by email and she will handle the donation.  Or visit our crowd funding site http://www.crowdfunder.co.uk/wings-over-africa/

 Well, good news finally!  Between STEP and ourselves, we have managed to raise the $20,000 or so that we need for the new aircraft.  (the hangar is still a work in progress!).  STEP is kicking in $10,000 from a donor in Sweden, and we have managed to raise the other 10,000 through our crowd funding site, and personal donations from friends.  We are just in the process of finalising the payment for the aircraft right now, and it will initially be flown to Louis Trichardt to be stored in our friend Ant's hangar, where he will go over it and fix any little thing that needs to be done.  The aircraft is in excellent condition by the way, but we are looking to add an extra luggage locker, and just check it out generally.  Here is a group photo of the aircraft at Groblersdal air strip after a successful test flight, piloted by yours truly, including our friends Ant & Norma, who have done so much to help us over the years. 

October 9th Friday

We had a bit of a fright landing at Rungwa, due to some tricky crosswinds, and ended up in the long grass at the end of the strip. No real damage, but the nosewheel bungie was snapped. Serafino, managed to fix it as good as new. 

After Skubie's unscheduled off road trip, we decided that conditions were just too windy and dangerous to continue at Rungwa with Skubie.  After talking to Alex Malle, the Project Manager at Rungwa (a Game Reserve has a Project Manager whereas a National Park has a chief park warden), he said that it did get windy that time of year in Rungwa.  Later, in the beginning of November, things calmed down there so we should be able to finish our work there then.  

Hence after a day of maintenance on Skubie where, with the help of Serafino, our driver and mechanic, we cleaned Skubie's engine, cleaned the air filters, replaced the fuel filter, and of course, replaced the broken nose wheel bungee.  That took up the 6th, and on the 7th, we blasted off for Ruaha again.  As we had Easterly headwinds of up to 30 kts, we filled Skubies tanks almost to the brim.  Plus we had some stuff which we had to bring with us, so we were overweight off that short Rungwa strip.  So it was with some trepidation that I advanced the power lever at 0630 in the morning to depart Rungwa.  I needn't have worried, whilst Skubie took some time to accelerate, we reached 60 kts with plenty of runway to spare, and as always, at 60 kts, Skubie leaps off the ground.  It was indeed a slow trip back, as the wind was right against us, and we were often doing no more than 30 kts, (40 mph).  Whilst it only took us an hour and a half to get there from Msembe, to get back to Msembe took 2.5 hours.  We carried out a recce for Malle on the way back, so we made some use of the time, but still......

Back at Msembe we flew another block count, and then, answering an SOS from a vulture researcher, we headed off west to check out her vulture.  It hadn't moved for days, so she was worried that it might be dead or injured.  It was fitted with a GPS backpack, so we could home in on the last known position, which led us directly to a new elephant carcasse!  Hence the reason the vulture wasn't moving.  Why move away from a substantial meal?  This was out in the middle of no-where, 80 K's west of park HQ. The carcase would never have been found if not for the Vulture GPS position. 

Had a close encounter with a Giraffe on takeoff for the following morning.  After having turned onto the runway, done my power checks etc and started my takeoff run, a Giraffe ambled onto the runway in front of me just as I was about to get airborne.  There was no space to stop, so I had to continue, but did a steep turn to the left, 20 ft off the ground and mercifully, managed to avoid him.  I can still remember the amazed expression on his face as I roared past, missing him by about 5 feet.  No doubt, I had a surprised expression on my face as

We have been asked to help out with the official Elephant census. The results for last year were so bad the government want a recount to confirm. We will be tasked with performing Total counts of random 10 K square blocks, to confirm the estimated couunts of the larger Cessna 206's.

Sept 24 Thursday

A typical day consists of getting up at 6 am, no real hardship as there is nothing to do at night anyway.  We are usually in bed by 9 pm, and coz we got up so early, can only read for a short while until we fall asleep.  We don't even bother with brekky, and have taken to making coffee the night before and putting it into a thermos, so we don't wast any time waiting for the water to boil.  Getting the aircraft ready to fly is a bit of a faff as we have to take off the wing covers and fold them and put them away. Then we refuel, (I don't do it the night before, because we typically carry a lot of fuel, (70 litres) and there is a slight leak in the main tank, so I don't want to put extra pressure on it. 

Once refuelled and pre-flighted, we are airborne about 0715.  The temperature has been going up the last couple of weeks, it started off around 18 deg at 0700, but now it is 22 to 24 deg, hence the earlier we get airborne the better.  Skubie takes off at pretty much max all up weight with that sort of fuel load, but as the strip is long and only at 3000 ft altitude, we are usually at 100 ft by halfway.  The air is beautifully smooth around that time of day, as the thermals don't kick in till around 8.30 - 9 am.  We usually have a 30 min transit time to get on station, and take about 1.5 hours to complete our 10 km square transect block.  So basically a 2.5 hour flight there and back from Msembe.  We plan to do some of the more southerly transect blocks from Jongomero next week, and then we will head west to Rungwa, to do the game reserve there the week after.  We aim to do 30 of these blocks, which will be a total of 80 to 90 hours.  Quite a lot for Skubie, and he will need a service after.