Iris - her early years: IRIS FLIES ACROSS SUDAN

Laura McDermid continues her stories about Iris McCallum's early years in East Africa and the Sudan. In part 1 of this story she recounts how she had to fly a bunch of Belgian Missionaries to Aweil, a city in northwestern South Sudan, from Wilson in Nairobi in her old mate 'ARN', the Piper Aztec 5Y-ARN.

UGLY IS PRETTY: LEAR 25 VS PILATUS PC-6

When you go to a party where you don't know anybody, you should always go for the 'Ugly' girl, because she will be happy that you chose to spend time with her.

CIRRUS G7 LAUNCHED IN AFRICA

What makes one aircraft better than another? Range, Speed, or carrying capacity, short field performance, operating costs, high wing, low wing, side stick, traditional control yoke?

PRESIDENT'S TROPHY AIR RACE 2024

The annual Presidents Trophy Air Race (PTAR) is the highlight of the year for many competitive general aviation pilots.

THE ABSA LOWVELD AIRSHOW 2024

This year marked the thirtieth edition of the Lowveld airshow – and it was widely acclaimed as the best ever.

PREVIEW: AFRICAN AEROSPACE AND DEFENCE EXPO(AAD)

Guy Leitch finds out from AAD Exhibition Director, Ms Nakedi Phasha, how the buildup to this year's biennial expo is going, and what visitors and exhibitors can expect.

APRIL 2023

April has been a very quiet month on the local aviation marketplace with only nine new registration allocations and three deletions, according to the officially-supplied register review.

PIPISTREL PANTHERA FINALLY HERE

One of the world's most eagerly awaited piston single engine aircraft designs has finally arrived in South Africa. ZU-KTR is a long awaited Panthera, proudly owned by Bertus Kritzinger, a Free State trucker, and based at New Tempe in Bloemfontein, where the well-known Ferriera Aviation has assembled it.

STAGGERWING - ALREADY OLD WHEN NEW

The Staggerwing was the climax, and the end, of an era.

The Aim of Bombing

In modern warfare it's not the soldiers who die - it's the civilians. One of the best examples of this is carpet bombing.

SACRIFICE

John continues his anecdotes about the sacrifices he has had to make in the course of his helicopter bush flying career.

KENYA - SAA PARTNERSHIP DELAY

KENYA AIRWAYS AND South African Airways announced the establishment of a highly anticipated Pan-African Airline Group three years ago.

TO PARIS FOR LUNCH

One morning I arrived back at Lanseria from a two day charter to a dreary Northern Cape iron mine. Entering the terminal, I removed my wings and epaulets, thrust them into my flight bag, and headed for the restaurant.

ASCA'S MPUMI MPOFU: READY FOR TAKE-OFF

Ms Mpumi Mpofu has occupied the hot seat as Chief Executive of ACSA, the Airports Company of South Africa for a tumultuous past four years.

HYDROGEN POWERED PLANE TESTED

WORLD’S LARGEST liquid hydrogen-powered aircraft, using a 1 MW fuel cell engine, has been tested.

CAMEROON - BLAMES BOEING

BOEING JUST CANNOT STAY out of trouble. It has become the whipping boy for endless absurd claims.

IRIS GOES TO SOMALIA

Having spent the last couple of years flying to a rota, I was thoroughly enjoying the freedom and randomness of flying charters at Sunbird Aviation.

TELEPORTATION

One of the best clients for whom I ever flew was BP, the British oil giant. I was with them in Algeria for about seven years, from the very start of their large gas projects, right in the heart of the Sahara Desert, near the small towns of In Amenas and In Salah.

FEBRUARY 2023

February has shown steady growth in the number of aircraft registered. Four fixed wing and one helicopter were added while the non-type certified (NTCA) register grew by seven.

RIGHT SEAT RULES NO. 16 FUEL SYSTEMS WHY SO COMPLICATED?

You know those aggranoying people who say, “Oh I wouldn't fly in one of those little things - you can't just pull over and fix it if something goes wrong\"? What makes this particularly irritating is that the bastards are right.

WHY CAN AEROPLANES FLY UPSIDE-DOWN¿

In 1945, the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, precursor of NASA and source of much of our knowledge about practical aerodynamics, published a hefty compendium of aerofoil data, NACA Technical Report 824, which later appeared in book form under the title Theory of Wing Sections.

Flying Cars A fool and his money...

There is a hoary old adage - that you can fool most of the people most of the time. And that's enough to raise lots of money for screwball ideas. The Pegasus, a VTOL business jet that is nothing more than a computer graphic comes to mind.

TRAVOLTA'S CROOKED PILOTS?

TWO PILOTS ARE CHARGED with embezzling close to $800,000 from John Travolta.

SAFETY FEATURE

General aviation hides behind the safety record of its big brother - the airline industry.

STELLENBOSCH AIR SHOW

The Western Cape does not get as many airshows as the Joburg area - which is a shame as it has great airshow performers and one of the best venues in the world for a flying club airshow.

SAA TAKATSO SALE CALLED OFF

SOUTH AFRICA’S Public Enterprises Minister Pravin Gordhan has announced that the sale of a 51% stake in South African Airways (SAA) to the Takatso Consortium has been cancelled.

EAA AIRWEEK 2024

Having attended Oshkosh in 2023, I was looking forward to our own, miniature version in Middelburg, Mpumalanga.

PIPER'S COMANCHE 180 - IT TICKS ALL THE BOXES

The Comanche is a fabulous plane - that was frankly just too good to be a Piper.

INDIAN OCEAN ISLAND ODYSSEY (OR FIASCO)

Before the South African political transformation, a group of diving enthusiasts wished to extend their diving experience to the more northern reaches of the Indian Ocean.

THE WAR AGAINST CYBERATTACKS

The recent much-publicised breach of the South African National Defence Force's (SANDF) networks by the 'Snatch' ransomware team, in which they stole multiple terabytes of files and published them online, has thrown into sharp relief the need for strong cyber security practices for African militaries, especially as they adopt more digitised processes and products such as drones and command & control systems.