Friday, March 20, 2015

Dylan takes to the Skyye!!

I love taking someone for a first-time experience and today it was Dylan's turn as we took to the Durban Skyye for a flight down and up the coast. Dylan has been kindly helping with some training and exercises at the Toti Gym and I was able to return some of the favour and show him the basics of flying my Sling 2-seater aircraft. He took to it like a natural and we were soon doing turns and manouvres in the sky!! If he was a bit nervous, it didn't show.

Dylan with my Sling 2-seater with 100 hp Rotax engine
Durban Skyye are Agents for the Sling Aircraft which are designed and manufactured in South Africa and exported around the world. An assembly plant has also been established in California as well as Australia and there are now Sling owners, as well as kit-builders in several continents as the Sling takes centre stage as a popular flight training aircraft. 

Dylan at ease holding the flight controls of ZDL

Taking selfies as we fly on auto-pilot

Umhlanga beachfront from 500ft

Suncoast Casino off the starboard wing of ZDL

Umhlanga Lighthouse
The cockpit of my plane
 I have twin EFIS (Onboard computer, engine flight infirmation systems) installed in front of each of the seats with dual flight controls. This makes it easy to fly the plane from both seats.. perfect for long distance flying and also instruction. The onboard computers are designed and made by MGL Avionics in Cape Town and incorporate a GPS linked to an auto-pilot, so one can load a route programmed from a laptop or home computer and transfer it to the EFIS by SD card. This makes longer trips, such as our recent trip to Victoria Falls, and our coming trip to Madagascar so much easier. The system also monitors engine functions and presents a full display of tempertures and pressures, as well as flight information such as distance to destination, wind speed and direction and all of the airports in South Africa and beyond. 

Around the World in a Sling 

To prove the capability and endurance of this South African designed aircraft, the daring owners of The Airplane Factory in Johannesburg have flown their aircraft around the world twice as well as trans-Africa to Poland and trans-Atlantic to Wisconsin, USA for the world's largest airshow there.

Madagascar

For more about our July 2015 Sling Madagascar Tour, click on this link here.

Baobab trees near Morondava we will be visiting in Madagascar this year

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