By Andre Venter
Krugersdorp Airfield has earned somewhat of a reputation over the years for hosting brilliant events that the weather more often than not ruins to a certain extent. Fortunately, the fly-in on Saturday had no such bad luck, the weather was amazing and by 12:30 the temperature was up to 28°.
I arrived at the airfield pretty early to find Krugersdorp residents moving their trousered aircraft out the hangars onto the apron. It's great to see these rare aircraft brought out for the public to enjoy. Dale de Klerk singled out seven single-seat aircraft and these were parked front and centre for everyone to see. These aircraft were a recently restored S1S Pitts, a Super Baby Great Lakes, a Cvjetkovic CA-61, a Neuport 11, a Thatcher CX4 and two Fournier RF4s.
The Puma Energy Flying Lions flew in from Rand and entertained the visitors with one of the amazing flat displays. After a great breakfast, the team had a look at the aircraft on display, Scully was really happy to see ZS-MEL the Pitts S1S fully restored as he had flown this particular aircraft in an aerobatics competition about 50 years ago. Ellis had nothing but compliments for the restoration done by Johan Loubser in his garage over a twelve-year period and the final paintwork done by Aircraft Inc.
The Orion Cub was on display and as usual, drew a lot of attention with many people looking at the prototype and silently wishing they had one. Dale de Klerk took the aircraft for a flight to show off the abilities of this South African-designed and built aircraft. In keeping with the Taildragger theme five Piper Cruisers were on display as well.
The North American Navion belonging to Steve George, our ATC for the day, performed a flat display and once landed was joined by the recently rebuilt Navion of Ivan Marx on static display. The guys at Aircraft Inc. really did an immaculate job on this rebuild.
While all the flying was going on the visitors were entertained by live music and of course, everyone was enjoying all the wonderful food on offer from the restaurant and the various food stalls.
A total of thirty-five aircraft flew in for the day which by all standards is a great turnout for a breakfast fly-in, with airfields hosting such great events we will soon be back to the numbers that were attending before the world was dumped into the Covid madness, well a drop in the fuel price will also definitely help.
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