Adam West of our local Cape Albatross Hang-glider Club shot some beautiful video of flying Table Mountain and the Twelve Apostles in a brief break between the winter storm fronts. Enjoy 🙂
Hang Gliding flight over Cape Town and Table Mountain from Adam on Vimeo.
A beautiful day along the Cape Peninsula flying a Wills Wing T2 145. Launching from Signal Hill, climbing out over Lions Head, crossing over to Table Mountain and the 12 Apostles, then back to land at Mouille Point before the rain.
Sometimes a spectacular scene just smacks straight into your cerebral cortex. Stepping out of a cabin in a nature reserve, the first direct rays of the morning sun backlit… well, everything.
Yesterday yielded the opportunity to do one of the premier Cape powered paraglider flights – Cape Point. The Jettly PPG is an incredibly portable and versatile aircraft, but with a cruising speed of only around 25 knots and maximum sustainable speed peaking at 37 knots for the fastest XC wings, we need ideal wind conditions to attempt routes such as these. We have specifically been watching for forecast conditions that would allow a new first – flying around the peninsula, down one side and back up the other. To date all flights (only 4-5 other occasions that the flight has been successfully completed) have been exclusively along the western side. 30 April 2013 had a forecast for light ESE in the morning with light to moderate SW in the afternoon. As all pilots know, forecasts are completely trustworthy… or not.
We launched in the late morning from Hout Bay in a very light breeze; anything helps when you are foot-launching with a full tank of fuel. Climbing over the neck between Noordhoek and Chapman’s Peaks, we climbed steadily to 2000ft, and then overflew FAR139 (the controlled airspace around the Simonstown Naval Base) with pre-arranged permission. The views flying south along the coast were beautiful; False Bay at peace with the encircling mountains hazy in the distance.
The hands-off flying was rudely interrupted when we reached the end of the Klaasjagersberg ridge, however: an increasingly strong north-west breeze threw turbulent air off the peak and caused a few minutes of tachycardia. Flying closer to Cape Point, it was apparent that the wind was persistently NW, and strong enough to cause pause for reassessment. Prevented from flying lower by the restricted arispace over Cape P0int Nature Reserve, we crossed high from Diaz Cross to Diaz Beach to Diaz Point. Feeling that discretion was better than a long lonely swim, we didn’t fly beyond the point in the northwest wind.
A long and slow but beautiful flight back up the western side of the peninsula followed; only beyond the reserve could we dip down below the inversion at 1000ft and find the forecast southerly. Climbing again from Kommetjie, we bypassed the long white sands of Noordhoek Beach and routed directly into Hout Bay with dwindling fuel supplies. The breeze in Hout Bay on the ground was still SE and brisk enough to allow a three perfect landings on the doorstep of Dunes, where we were welcomed for a celebratory cold drink.
A little over two hours flying, 75km distance covered, a fuel consumption of 9, 10 and 12 liters for the three paramotors = priceless new experience.
Track log on Leonardo. More images below – click on a thumbnail to go to the slideshow.
My good mate Ant of The Aerial Perspective was very kind to invite me along to Greyton, where he needed to take some pictures. We cruised out there in the Vito early this morning to find the town dead still (wind and street-life) with heavy dew on the ground, and so we stopped at a local coffee shop for tea and toast. Greyton is as pleasantly bucolic as I remember, albeit somewhat more developed these days.
Eish… the work, she has been too much.
I have been nose-to-grindstone for quite some time, but the experience has been incredibly rich, with a number of firsts. Some of those stories will follow, I hope, but the blog takes a back seat at these times. Unfortunately, the flying has also been exceptionally sparse. In the absence of my own escapades, I stumbled across this video. It captures much of the essence of PPG in South Africa. Enjoy.
Paramoteur: South African Tour 2012 from Luc Trépanier on Vimeo.
En septembre 2012, Cyril et moi sommes allés en Afrique du Sud pour visiter au sol, mais surtout pour survoler en paramoteur ce magnifique pays. Nous y avons rencontré des pilotes ayant un haut niveau de maîtrise de notre sport. Ces derniers nous ont grandement facilité la tache au cours de notre voyage et nous en sommes reconnaissant. L’Afrique du Sud est un pays offrant des paysages et une faune unique. Ce petit vidéo sans prétention relate quelques vols que nous y avons fait. C’était mon premier voyage dans cette région du monde et je ne souhaite qu’une chose, c’est d’y retourner.
In September 2012, Cyril and I went to South Africa to visit the country from the ground but also to fly with our paramotor over some magnificant places. We have met pilots with high skill level who help us along our trip through the country and we thank them. South Africa has a unique wildlife and landscapes to offer. This unpretentious little video present some flights that we have done. It was my first trip to this part of the world and the only thing I wish is to go back.
Wow, I’m exhausted. The 2013 South African Society of Anaesthesiologists congress was a fabulous success, with huge kudos going to the local and national bodies who did all the hard work. I was particularly gobsmacked by the quality of the registrar presentations, but everything from the overseas guest speakers down to the ice-cream stand was great. Some contentious issues, some good arguments… and some bad ones 😉
Due to the nature of the multiple streams, I attended a fraction of the talks and didn’t even take notes for all of those, but this year’s “Rough Notes” compendium still runs to 41 pages. I’ve caught up the talks of the first day of the refresher that were missing, and tried to correct the blatant typographical errors and mistakes. Please feel free to share the link, with all the usual disclaimers:
SASA 2013 – Ross’ Rough Notes – Complete Set
SASA have also made many of the abstracts (especially the guest speakers) available in the latest issue of SAJAA. You can find the Table of Contents and links to the full PDFs here:
SAJAA 2013 Vol 19, No 1: Table of Contents
Your feedback and/or comments here on the blog are always welcomed. Enjoy!
A glitch somewhere in the Matrix has caused all the permalinks (the nice descriptive links to my blog’s posts and page) to fail. We’re busy looking for the problem, but haven’t found it yet, so if you’ve landed up on the home page after trying to follow a link from elsewhere, I apologize. You can find what you’re looking for either by clicking on one of the categories on the right, or by typing search terms into the search window on the top right-hand corner of each page. For instance, if you’re here for the SASA notes, type “SASA 2013” (or 2012, etc.) If you’d like info on powered hang-gliding, try that as a term. If you’re here for info on nyotaimori, try Wikipedia (if you’re at work) or Google (if you’re not). For everything else, there is Mastercard. :p
I was taking part and listening to the Registrar Communications stream for most of the day today, which was absolutely fantastic (even if I say so myself!). The quality was phenomenal. As a consequence of doing my own talk, however, I didn’t transcribe all of the others. Here’s the rest, and some updated notes:
SASA 2013 – Ross’ Rough Notes – Congress day 2 (incomplete)
My talk (on Confined Space Intubation) is available on the Presentations page here on the blog.
The first day of the main congress has just been completed. I felt strongly about attending the registrar research stream in the afternoon after the plenaries, which proved to be fascinating and of very high quality. Unfortunately, my battery again suffered for the last two talks, so I apologize that those were not transcribed. The notes from the first day of the refresher still need to be completed, but here is the draft in the meantime:
Stumbled across this while doing other things and couldn’t help wanting to share. Watch in HD if you can. Folks from Cape Town and surrounds will particularly enjoy the new visions of familiar scenery…
A Lapse in Time – 2012 Time Lapse Showreel of Rory Allen from Rory on Vimeo.
