December 2011
fly-aways
- Utility
operations weekend
at Thomas
River
- 1 December 2011
- By John Miller
- Well known Eastern Cape farmer and pilot, Reid Wardle, hosted an instructional weekend October 15th for pilots keen to explore their short field, rough field and density altitude-related skills. Reid has an airstrip on his farm, Rexfield, located midway between Cathcart and Stutterheim and owns a Cessna 170 and a partnership in ex-Bobby Ewing de Havilland Chipmunk, ZS-URC. 30 pilots attended along with their friends and families and Reid organised accommodation shared between his neighbours and his own farm. Some camped in the airfield hangar with pilots arriving from Friday afternoon and departing home again on the Sunday.
The Border Flying Club's Les Daly was the principle instructor and he was joined by ERJ pilot, Tom Williamson and 43 Air School Andrew de Bruin, all of whom volunteered to teach safety skills during their weekend off. Experienced bush pilot, Dave Hart, from East London provided ground briefings and related his stories of flying into and out of unprepared airstrips in the region. Dave Hart runs a busy maintenance shop at East London Airport. Others provided help too including Mark Oostingh with a minibus from East London’s Automall Nissan dealership.
Visitors included Stutterheim-based pilot, John Rance, who flew into Rexfield with his family's Beechcraft King Air, ZS-JCR. The aircraft is used extensively for conducting Rance Timber's business trips into Southern Africa. His co-pilot was well-known Eastern Cape aviator, Mike Wienk. Other visitors included Baron owner, Pierre Van Wyk and a number of Jabiru owners and pilots who flew in from as far afield as George. James Wardle and Dave Hartmann flew into Rexfield in their recently restored and historic Auster AOP V.
Run on a voluntary basis with the object of providing pilots with a relaxed and enjoyable safety theme, the event was wonderfully free of airport charges and security restraints and cost visitors R220 plus their flying time. Reid welcomes flying visitors to his farm and the airfield has three runways with the longest being 1350 metres. Elevation is 4000 feet.
