tony_gibson

As discussed i will most certainly be in for this trip. I have my Farther who stays in Melbourn and has a 46 acer farm. I am sure we can use this for a stop over. Then there are more plcaes on the Gold coast i am sure we can get place to stay with there freinds i needs be.

I dont have any kit that i hire ut to clients yet. The reason is a PPG unit in South Africa is almost 10x the price it costs in the rest of the world. This does not make financial sense for me to have more than my own PPG unit any more. I had 2 at one stage but sold it. Our Exchange rate current ly is €1.00 = R12.80 today. Yesterday it was less and it is climbing everyday.

Welcome to the South Africa thread to the Paramotor Club Forum. I am Tony Gibson and live in South Africa, I have been flying PG, PPG, PPT and PPC's now for many years and have a School in Centurion near Pretoria. We are located at 4670ft ASL which make flying PPG's very difficult if you dont fly with rather powerfull motors. The best part of this is the weather is stunning most of the time and we fly all year round as it does not snow here at all. Winter is also not a rain fall time for Pretoria so our most stunning flights are during this time of the year. The down side is the temp. can be as low as -5deg C and this means just getting dressed for the occasion. Summer is stunning ly hot in the midday and causes big booming thermals so if this is your game then we have the place and the thermal to suit. The early morning flying is the best but usualy the grass field we fly from is wet making it better for more experienced pilots than students and there is no wind normaly at 5am. the afternoons are stunning for students and then we normaly get 2h30min of time to fly befor the sunn disappears. This is the main reason for the early morning starts as we can fly from 4:45am to around 10am with out to much turbulance in the mid summer time. Winter is a much later start and the sun sets at 5pm again. We have the best potential for long nav flying and the secnery is stunning. We over fly at least 3 game farms on a long flight, but remember the small cats you see from the air can eat you if you land near them. Welcome to South Africa where the weather is good most of the year and the flying is awsome.

Yes Simon you are correct. It is very dangerous to go around zooming over the ground 3 feet during comp tasks. Dont get me wrong it is very nice doing this but the slightest miss jugement and you will get wrapped up in your frame with plenty of splinters flying around. I hope nobody takes flying low level for granted and as a norm PPG. It is very dangerous and really requires plenty of concentration. If you fly up at altitudes like we do we never do this low flying in anything other than good smooth conditions. Our motors, wing & props loose about 20% effiecency due to altitude and heat. At sea level pilots tend to get away with alot more than we can up here. In comps there are pilots that push the limit and others that fly very well and keep there saftey margins with in there limits, They are the ones that will fly consistently and normaly win events. The normal acro low level stuff should be left to pilots with many years flying and dont ever be forced into flying like the top pilots with many years expereince. You never really need to fly low except for take off and landing. Flying low is not really cool, I do it and it ups my concentration but it is very noisy and becomes an irritation for people on the ground to have pilots buzzing around nearby all acting cool. I know as i say i have been dragged into this show off thing many times. I have been very lucky sofar but have had to do a few emergincy high speed touch downs in the worst possible times and areas. as i said i have been lucky. I got a call from an Instructor in South Africa who was watching the SA team practicing for the worlds doing the Clover leaf. He called me to ask if we had a death wish and that the organisers should have there heads read asking pilots to fly like holigans and put themselves in danger. This is the nature of humans,We push the limits to get others recognition and this is unfortunatly our races downfall.