Monthly Archives: July 2018

The Flying Lions, Arnie’s Love story

July 27, 2018 General News and Airshow Reviews No comments

The flying Lions, Arnie’s Love story

Arnie Meneghelli

The dream of one day owning a Harvard, (or Texan as it is more commonly known in its country of origin) was the product of my living and going to both primary and high school within a radius of 7 miles of Rand Airport in Germiston, South Africa.

Forty two Squadron was based at Rand Airport and in those early days of the 60’s, hundreds of Harvard’s were flown into Rand Airport, serviced and then test flown overhead the field. During those early formative years the seed of one day flying a Harvard was planted.

The chance to fulfill this dream came when the South African Air force decided to sell its large fleet of Harvard Trainers in 1994. We put in a tender and were awarded the first Harvard.

Two more Harvards followed within the next few years. We shared the hangar where Scully Levin kept his Pitts Specials. Not only is Scully a formidable formation and aerobatic pilot, he is also a person who is always ready to help a fellow pilot. It did not take long for the idea of a formation aerobatic team flying harvards to pop up. One thing led to another and the Flying Lions Aerobatic Formation Team was born.

The choice of pilots was most important. We had to have aerobatic formation pilots who fitted the bill as far as the flying went, but more important to consist of pilots who shared the same mental attitude or culture, discipline and passion.

The current pilots that were flying in Scully’s Shurlok Pitts Special Aerobatic Formation Team were ideal – I, in fact was the odd man out! So my training started in earnest and we eventually did our first display on the

4^TH December 1999 at Kitty Hawk.

The quest for sponsors then began. We realized we were onto something good here. Harvards are noisy, large, they present well, and they have a nostalgic element about them with the South African public. Unfortunately, they also gulp fuel at an alarming rate!

Our expenses were rising and our pockets were emptying!

The brushware company, which I owned in those days, Academy Brushware (Pty) Ltd was the first obvious choice to support our team, but the burden was a heavy one.

Our next stroke of luck came when Peugeot started co-sponsoring our three-ship team on 1 March 2000.

In January 2001 BP fuels with their subsidiary Castrol became part sponsors with Peugeot and Academy Brushware. Later that year, they allowed us to negotiate a sponsorship with Nissan who were interested in giving us an overall sponsorship for the Harvards with full Nissan livery and no other branding.

This happened in January 2002, Nissan SA approached Peugeot and BP and took over their portion of the sponsorship, and in the meantime we had acquired another two Harvards.

This sponsorship lasted four and a half years and was a most successful one for both parties.

BP Ultimate with its subsidiary Castrol then regained full sponsorship of the Flying lions and this lasted until 2010. Our association with BP was in actual fact the longest even though it was intermittent but had lasted from January 2001 up until August 2010, approximately nine years.

In August 2010 we entered into a temporary sponsorship agreement with Cell C and were flying the Cell C 4G logo around the country.

This was a short term sponsorship which lasted for just over a year.

Then in the 2012 Eqstra took over the sponsorship and we ran for four years giving them a large amount of advertising for their brand and ending the sponsorship when they unbundled the company in 2016.

We then operated for a year and a half without sponsors keeping the aircraft flying with our own funds and engaging every potential sponsor, until, in December 2016, we did a display at a private lodge in the Skeerpoort valley and Puma Energy was there and were enthralled by what they saw.

The rest is history and we are now the Puma Flying Lions and have a magnificent relationship with Puma Energy. It is a forward thinking company that concentrates on high quality fuels and the manufacture, storage and distribution thereof. They are involved in the community which they serve not only at ground roots level but also in the environmental aspect where they sponsor the Race for Rhinos and Rhino 911 operations that take care of traumatized and orphan rhinos during anti-poaching operations.

The team displays a four ship formation choreography of loops in Vic, in line abreast and in line astern ,with barrel rolls and straight rolls while trailing smoke which is nontoxic oil burning in the aircraft’s exhausts. They are well known for their precision formation flying and their magnificent night display.

The Flying Lions Aerobatic Formation Team has successfully dovetailed vintage aircraft, formation aerobatics and marketing to the benefit of all. And what keeps this all together and ticking is the passion of the pilots and the people behind the scenes that form part of a larger team.

Arnie Meneghelli

July 16, 2018 General News and Airshow Reviews No comments

Modimolle, formerly Nylstroom, is a town located near the southern edge of the Waterberg Massif in Limpopo province, South Africa. It is a medium-sized town that focuses primarily on agriculture and farming as well as wildlife and tourism. The Nylstroom Flying Club is home to the annual Taildragger Fly-in since 2010 and supports & promotes the ‘Fly Safe’-campaign. This was the 9th annual fly in.

The 2018 fly-in was yet again a great turnout and well organized by members of the Nylstroom Flying Club and Tayla-Kaè, Richard Nicholson , wife Mariette, sons Richard and Phillip made the event possible. A total of 106 aircraft made it into Nylstroom this year, as the weather didn’t behave most of the weekend, but it was a blessing it didn’t get rained out.Safety Officer, Nigel Musgrave kept aircraft from any incidents what so ever and allocated them to their parking, with help of the marshals.

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Breakfast was served for pilots and free coffee, and the afternoon one could buy a local boerewors roll or burger and not forgetting the pancakes.

ATNS controllers made sure all aircraft got in and out of the busy airfield with no hassles during the course of the weekend. Some of the aircraft such as the Cessna 195 owned by Archie Kemp who flew in with the ‘General’ Brian Stableford.Ivan van der Schaar flew in with his beautiful Brakpan based Boeing Stearman. Derek Hopkins flew in with his new RV7 ZU-POP and Peter Lea in his RV10 from Barberton.

A couple of helicopters’ also flew in for the day ranging from Alouette IIIs and IIs and a single Bell 206 and Aerospatiale Gazelle.

Most of the visitors decided to leave the Saturday morning due to some weather pulling in, others that stayed were treated to a spit braai and awards dinner and a night of socializing. Next year we look forward to the net Taildraggers fly in.

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Jarryd flew in on ZU-OKR, a Pakistan MFI-17 Mushshak while Flippie and Lettie drove up and made a weekend of it staying at Bushveld Game Farm what a nice get away venue for a few days.

July 9, 2018 General News and Airshow Reviews No comments

The first weekend of July, The SAAF museum hosted their annual monthly flying day at Airforce Base Swartkop in Pretoria. Probably one of the colder flying days we have attended and a good X-wind blowing across the field many of the Museum fixed wing aircraft were using the Grass runway towards the Snake Valley side of the base.

Harvard Club

Visitors from all over came to support the museum, as a small donation upon entry into Swartkop that’s goes to maintaining the Museums aircraft fleet and restoring future projects. The Windsock was busy with their filling breakfast, lunches and a piece of memorabilia for purchase to take home.

These flying days also give the public and opportunity to visit the Hangars and get up close and personal with past aircraft and the history of the South African Airforce. Its also a chance for volunteers to help rebuild or donate to the Museums Spitfire restoration and getting involved with the friends of the museum. And for the adrenaline junkie, one can go fly in a Harvard at a reasonable price at the Harvard Club of South Africa.

Museum Harvard

The SAAF Fire and Rescue crew opened the proceedings with a runway inspection, before the Atlas C.4M Kudu got airborne with the Golden Eagles Parachute Team. Most of the Museum Harvard’s and the odd Harvard Club machines took off and completed a series of currency flights and flips for the day. The Museum Choppers like the Alouette II and lonesome Puma were out and about also busy with currency flights and flipping.

SAAF Firetruck

Atlas Kudu

Museum Alouette II

A former workhorse of 44 Squadron the Cessna 185 also took to the skies and was joined by the Museums second C185 former 42 squadron bird. Most of the Museum Flying Exhibits should be seen at AAD2018 later this year. The closer we get to the 19-23 September 2018 we will see more flying from the Museum Flying days to come.

Cessna 185

Well done to the hard working ground crew keeping the museum aircraft in flying status, also giving up their Saturday to be on standby at the Museum. We look forward to the next flying day in the first week of August. Till then…..

“Keep them up where they belong”

July 4, 2018 General News and Airshow Reviews No comments

Border Aviation Open Day 2018

By Bradley Rutters

My name is Bradley Rutters and I am a aviation photographer in the Eastern Cape. This past weekend (the 30th of June) there was a aviation open day held by Border Aviation Club and Flight School at Wings Park. Not only were there a few Border Aviation aircraft on display, but there was also a Fly – Inn held on the same day and altogether there were around 32 fixed wing aircraft and 2 helicopters. It was amazing to see the variety of aircraft that were on display, ranging from a Jabiru to a Sling 2. Seeing as though I’m a member of Border Aviation Club I did my duty and I worked from 8:30-11:00 where I helped load passengers for the family flights hosted by Border Aviation. This was an incredibly fun event, and I really enjoyed taking the photo’s there.

Click to enlarge photos below

July 3, 2018 General News and Airshow Reviews, Pilots and Aircraft 1 Comment

Race for Rhinos 2018

The 2018 edition of Race for Rhinos finally arrived for all the eager competitors taking to the skies of Sua Pan in Botswana from the 28th June -1 July.The Sua Pan or Sowa Pan is a large natural topographic depression within the Makgadikgadi region of Botswana. It is located near the village of Sowa, whose name means salt in the language of the San.The Race for Rhinos in now in its forth year running and this year was the biggest amount of aircraft taking part in the race, a new world record.

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The vision for the race came from veteran pilot Chris Briers who has planned all four races to date, with the help of the Botswana government ,Botswana Tourism and the Botswana environmental Department.This is all to help stop the poaching of Africa’s most majestic animal the Rhinoceros . These animals are being poached on a daily rate and need to be protected before they’re are extinct.

Air racing is a highly specialised type of motorsport that involves aircraft or other types of aircraft that compete over a fixed course, with the winner either returning the shortest time, the one to complete it with the most points, or to come closest to a previously estimated time.

After arriving from Wonderboom National Airport in Pretoria on the Thursday before day1 of the Race. We were greeted by all of the known faces in the Southern African Region of the aviation community,while many aircraft were still arriving over head the pans above us. We had a fun-filled flight from Pretoria to Pilanesberg to clear customs and from their on to Sua Pan on ‘Little Annie’ An2 piloted by Jon-Marc and Mark Hill.We were allocated to our accommodation in comfortable tents that were placed up before arrival. Each day our tents were cleaned, beds made and all our valuables all in one place!

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The oldest aircraft in the race was the Navion, 1046, race 38
A few of the rarest aircraft; Race 14 a Rockwell’s Collins 112, first time in the Race for Rhinos, possibly early 70s model, a Rockwell Collins 114 Race 105 first time racing in the Race for Rhinos, and very rare to have both a 114 and a 112. Another rare aircraft was Race 40, the Dornier DO 27, also a first time at Race for Rhinos, the Harvard also rare as well as Little Annie
Biggest air race to date was in Bloemfontein in central South Africa with 111 entries, The 2018 Race for Rhinos is 117 entries.

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The huge marquee that was put up just in front of Race Headquarters where Brian Emmenis and his team were Broadcasting from and was our daily alarm clock playing music from 6am in the morning to get the competitors up and amped for the day ahead.At the Marquee we were served three meals a day,obviously that being breakfast,lunch and supper.The bar area was also placed there where we could enjoy many of the sunsets on shores of the pan and the evenings entertainments from various musicians. Most of the competitors were busy with their plotting’s and race briefings before everyone made route for the tents quite early before the start of day one of Thursday evening.

Day 1- Friday 2018-06-29

With our daily alarm clock getting us up nice and early thanks to Capital Sounds, we headed off to freshen up in the portable showers, straight after that to the filling breakfasts and Cappuccinos on tap to get all competitor’s ready for day 1 of the race. Pilots and Navigators then made their way to their aircraft while the Bathawk and Bantam took off for the Telstar mission to communicate with Race authorities if their had to be a emergency from one of the competing aircraft along the route. Chris Briers took media up in the Agusta A119 to get some aerial shots of different competitors. The chopper was donated 20 hours of flying during the race days.

The Kingdom of Sua Pan had its own non-radio station from Capital Sounds, filling us in with any information for the days proceedings with most of the base having sound equipment reaching far and wide into the distance. To make sure no one couldn’t miss out what was taking place. The team comprised of Brian Emmenis, Leon Du Plessis, Rodger Coetzee, Ricky Fouche, Eric Nkomo.

At 10am saw the first takeoff from race 74, a Aerostar/Piper 600A ZS-PCV flown by JZ Moolman and his navigator Jannie Moolman of the 114 competitors with ex President of Botswana Ian Khama waving the Botswana National flag of the start of go time!

Just after mid day the first of the aircraft made their way back to base,once landed and checked back in at Race HQ,Then treated to lunch and competitors getting ready for day 2.We were then treated to some fantastic flying displays from a T6 Harvard flown by Dion Raath, Extra 330 flown by Nigel Hopkins who also led Team Extreme with Jason beamish in the Rv7,Mark Hensman in the RV8 and Mark Sampson in the Sbach XA41.Neville Ferreira flew a great show in his Kitty Hawk based Slick 540,The Raptors RVs were the up next in their tight formation flying and then joined up with other Rv owners in a mass RV formation that has not been seen before in Southern Africa,with a total of 12 RVs in one formation. What a sight it was!

Raptors Rvs

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Team Extreme

Dinner was served and a short race briefing was presented and some of the daily loggers were shown. Day 2 was slowly upon us.

Top 40-Day 1

Day 2- Saturday 2018-06-30

The day once again with our daily alarm clock, shower Breakfast and go time. Day 2 saw all the slowest aircraft getting off the ground first and the route being more difficult then the day before. The flag was waved and the first aircraft was off the ground, that being Race 108 a Piper PA-22 ZS-CET flown by Pilot Richard Fair and Navigator Timothy Fair. At lunch time all the aircraft arrived back and a sight it was to behold seeing many aircraft arriving back at the same time. Not long after that the Puma Flying Lions Harvard’s arrived from Rand Airport. The first four aircraft arrived back and the long wait for who was the winner of this years Race for Rhinos. The late evening airshow took place as like the day before plus the Puma Flying Lions doing their display plus water skiing on the water in front of the marquee was unbelievable, something we don’t see everyday.

The evening saw a dress up of the early fifties of pilots and crew, where some of the beautiful ladies dressed up like cabin crew and some of the men taking the part of early fighter pilots.The Minister of Environment, Conservation, Natural Resources and Tourism Affairs Mr. T.S Khama greeted the competitors of the final results and presented why everyone has to work together to protect Botswana’s wildlife and still keep the country as a tourist attraction for many. He also addressed many with a joke or two, not many ministers one can interact with without having body guards swarming the place!

Mr. H.T Khama

Stephan Fourie nd Derek Bird in Race 99 finished in 3rd place.

Richard and Timothy Fair took 2nd place in race 108.

Overall winners in race 25,Michiel and Greylingh Jansen.

Race 25 at turn point two

Race 25
CENTURY AVIONICS TROPHY Best handicap Performance on day 1
THE RACE FOR RHINOS TROPHY To the aircraft and crew placed first overall
ZU-NKC
KLN / Aveko sr VL-3, 100HP, 3-bl CS, N
Handicap speed: 134.79
Michiel Jansen and Greyling Jansen

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Chris Briers was up next to thank all that took place and made the forth Race for Rhinos take place without any incidents involved, he thanked the Government of Botswana for all their hard work and finance’s put into the race, without them tis race would not be taking place. We would like to thank Chris Briers and the Botswana Government for hosting the media and to Mark Mansfield for organising everything for Aviation Central from all the updates and making sure we were taken good of. We were then treated to again some of the various musicians and Diner .The next day we set sail back to South Africa in ‘Little Annie’ flown by Father and son Jon-marc and Mark Hill. We thank them for getting us to and from Sua pan safe and sound.