By Garth Calitz
EAA members from all over the Northern part of South Africa descended on Airspan Executive Airport for the 2024 edition of Sun ‘n Fun. With temperatures reaching close to 40° Celsius, there was no shortage of Sun and of course, a great turnout secured the Fun part of the weekend.
The first aircraft started arriving early on Friday morning with visitors setting up camp or taking advantage of the regular shuttles to the guest houses in Rustenburg to get checked in before the evening's festivities. It is great to see the aviation community once again making a weekend of these events, after the pandemic people seemed to rather just fly in for the day.
Airspan Airport is nestled in the foothills of the Magaliesburg between Olifantsnek Pass and Buffelspoort Dam and sports a 900m long and 9m wide tar and well-lit runway. Up until recently, Airspan was a hidden gem but due to the renewed effort of the owners and the support of the general aviation community, especially the EAA, the airfield has become a very popular fly-in destination for breakfast or lunch.
The owners, Fanie Coetzee, Barry Harmse en Fanie van der Walt have big plans with the airfield they are planning on lengthening the runway by about 400m to the south, which will result in an almost 1300m long runway, which is plenty for an even larger aircraft on the hottest day. A series of hangars are also planned, with the sad squatter situation at Rustenburg Airfield, Airspan is a great option to have for the local aviators. Three accommodation aircraft have already been constructed and can be rented for overnight stays.
Saturday morning arrived and with it came an influx of aircraft, the early birds started arriving just after sunrise. The arrivals carried on for most of the morning with very close to eighty aircraft making their way to Airspan, which I believe is the best turnout at Sun ‘n Fun for many years.
This Sun ‘n Fun was filled with activities starting early in the morning, SAPFA organised an Air Navigation Rally (ANR) which was very well supported by fourteen participating teams. Tarryn Myburgh and Adrienne Visser in a Jabiru taught the guys a lesson in rally flying, they were followed by fellow Protea team of Rob Jonkers and Martin Meyer in a Cessna 182 and third was Jaco Ainslie also in a Jabiru, he did exceptionally well considering he didn’t have a navigator with him.
Pierre van der Walt and his team from Sport Plane Builders spent most of the day judging aircraft, which couldn’t have been too pleasant in the midst of the heat wave. The judging started early in the morning but the judges were still busy fairly late in the afternoon with the rather large number of entrants. Aircraft were judged into five categories with a bonus category for the aircraft that flew the furthest to be there for the weekend.
Two very interesting talks were presented in the wonderful conference facility at the airfield the first talk was by John Comely and Paul Ludick the Authors of FLIT: Forced Landing Into Trees. John and Paul explained how a forced landing into trees can massively increase survivability.
The second was presented by Wouter Botes the Plane Wreck Hunter, who elaborated on his theories on how the Vickers Viscount “Rietbok” went missing in 1967.
The last of the flying events for the day was the STOL competition which was accompanied by a spot landing competition, the unusually high density altitude made life very difficult for the competitors. Once the handicaps were worked into the equation Sean Cronin took top honours in a Bat Hawk, followed by Dale de Klerk in an Orion Cub and Neil Bowden in yet another South African aircraft a Sling 2.
As the shadows grew longer the majority of the visitors that were staying over took advantage of the quiet time to get freshened up for the evening's dinner and prize giving. Both the EAA and the Airspan team did a wonderful job of making the 2024 edition of Sun ‘n Fun a massive success, well done and we hope to be back next year.
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