I’ve uploaded another two talks onto the ‘Presentations’ page. These are lectures I gave recently as part of the ILS Aviation Health Care Practitioner’s course at the Red Cross Air Mercy Service here in Cape Town. The should be considered introductory, and there is a lot of (verbal) content not in the presentations, but the [...]
Great PPG flying on the West Coast today. We met at Grotto Bay and flew north along the coastline to Yzerfontein – 30km of almost uninhabited and deserted beach, with the occasional wild ostrich for company. After an extended coffee break at Yzerfontein to assess what the wind was doing (a NE land breeze meeting [...]
Reading my last post, I realised I alluded to the Zee PHG photo without actually publishing it. Daft. Here you go: While the uninitiated might presume this tiny aircraft to be a microlight, it is actually a powered (aka motorized) hang-glider – the wing is a perfectly normal standard hang-glider with which (unlike a microlight) [...]
If you’re a regualr reader (or an observant occasional one) you’ll have noted that I have been adding some changes and upgrades to this blog in the last few weeks. This is partly because I am a card-carrying gadgetologist (*grin*), but mostly because I am trying to keep riding the wave of ease of online [...]
My delightful and talented wife has been invited to present her Masters dissertation at a conference which is being held this week at a hotel bordering on the Kruger Park. To her credit, she invited me to come along, so with a week of leave in hand we flew off to Lanseria (near Johannesberg) and [...]
The last two days I have eschewed my ‘new’ habit of cycling to work in favour of a much earlier start, but a greater reward: powered paraglider “Dawn Patrols”. Keith Pickersgill of Xplorer PPG invited me to join them in flying from Kreeftebaai just south of Melkbosstrand on Monday at 05h15 (just in time to [...]
Apologies to people reading this who are not paraglider or hang-glider pilots… it may not make much sense (but then again, does your life make sense if you’re not a free-flying pilot? Think about it…) I was blessed with an actual day off today, and even more fortuitously one on which my wife is stuck [...]
South Georgia is without doubt one of the most beautiful places I have ever visited. I first set foot there in Right Whale Bay, late one summer evening, and was confronted with pandemonium – more seals than I had ever seen before, mixed with more penguins than I could comprehend, surrounded by other birds on [...]
It’s not only the wildlife in Antarctica that is photogenic: the landscapes, sea and ice combine in innumerable ways to create awesome beauty. While slowly cruising around Cierva Cove on the western side of the Antarctic Peninsula, the groups was captivated by a pair of crab-eater seals. Turning around, I shot the sculpted ‘bergs beneath [...]
