My dearest friend and I left home unexpectedly to take her to the bank to renew her debit card an get the essentials, like coffee. I love my coffee and if I can’t have it in the morning I am totally lost for the rest day.
She was already inside the bank and I went to my banks’ ATM to draw some cash, I never noticed the person behind me and as I turned around I made a comment “Well, that is the first, I always wanted to draw money like this (me wearing a mask)”, he just shook his head and tried not to laugh. On my way to my friends bank I made some people really laugh out loud, yes, even the security guys who was about to refill the ATM at her bank.
I made a comment out loud “I always wanted to enter a bank like this“, as I passed the queue. Everybody just burst out in laughter.
We finished our shopping and went back home.
Day 10 – Ndizani world tour
Today we flew from Santiago, Chile, westbound to Easter Island (better known as Isla de Pasqua).
A very boring “laid back” flight of almost 5 hours (gate-to-gate) over the South Pacific Ocean.
As the days drag by with the same routine, get up, let the dogs out, make coffee, switch on my computer.
I watch the news about the virus and keep by distance and my mouth shut.
I can only laugh at the comments people are making and think by myself, what were they doing before social media.
I will tell you what I did, I kept myself busy by watching movies which I have recorded, reading (yes, I have read quite a lot of books).
I discovered a series to watch (Blindspot), while I am doing stuff on my computer, I am watching this series.
Day 9 – Ndizani World Tour
The leg of today took us from Quito, Ecuador all the way down to Santiago, Chile. Below is the routes as we have flown it to date. Santiago is also the main gateway to Oceania, with flights to Sydney, Auckland, Easter Island (our next destination), Papeete and Melbourne.
The route
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The Gallery
Photo from the drone
Towerview
Very tight to get out
Already pushed back and started
Here comes “Johnny”
SAA22B taxi out, me on the runway ready to depart
Leaving Ecuador, Quito in the background
Leaving Ecuador
Close encounter of the mountainous kind
The usual stuff that happens
Parked at Santiago
As my flight attendants says after we landed, “Be safe, Be kind to one another”
I spent the day like a usual work day by doing some drawing work, little bit of this, little bit of that.
The this and that of the morning – I decided support my division for a change and I took another Boeing 747 (VH-OEI) from Perth to Sydney in their weekly event called Milk Run, which is by far the most popular of the regular weekly events. This event occurs between Melbourne and Sydney.
Nothing interesting happened on this flight except that I have departed late afternoon and flew into night, which by then, the Monday Milk Run have already started and the virtual skies was starting to get busy from Adelaide.
It was fun flying into this busy airspace and VATPAC ATC are really knowing what they are doing, you really have to listen very carefully when they are talking to you to give you instruction. The landing at Sydney was amazing and I had a landing rate of -233 ft/minute with will be more or less equal to 4 ft / second.
Day 8 – Ndizani World Tour
Todays’ legs of the world tour with Ndizani took us from El Alto, Bolivia to Quito, Equador. The descend into Quito was not easy regarding the low clouds and mountains surrounding the airport. SAA22B, flew ahead as I had a delayed departure.
The route
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The Gallery
Climbing to cruise altitude
Taxi in at Quito
Terrain radar showing the mountains surrounding Quito
Although, I could not wait to get back home into my isolated environment, my safe haven from what is happening. Every time when I get into my car, I realize I must actually clear my dash-cam SD Card. Would love to record and post the videos of the traffic onto my Youtube Channel.
Day 7 – Ndizani World Tour
Today we had our laughs and our sorrow. My heart goes out to a friend and his wife for losing a family member and they can’t travel because of countries and airlines that is in lock-down because of the virus that is causing havoc every where.
The route from St Maarten to El Alto, La Paz, Bolivia took us 4 hours 35 minutes in flight time and gate to gate, 5 hours. One of the feature of this area is Lake Titicaca, you can read more here.
Nothing much is happening on a cold and wet Saturday. Our neighbors measured 40 mm of rain overnight. I have emptied my rain meter at 15:00 (SAST), measuring 65 mm of rain. Spent the day with a blanket over my legs, trying to get my software to work properly and watching movies.
I have updated my flight log for the past few days.
The Whatsapp messages I was receiving, started to irritate me. Still people that is spreading false and fake information (what did these people do before (Whatsapp, MXIT, BBM, Facebook, etc).
Day 6 – Ndizani World Tour
Ndizani took us to the Caribbean Islands. A flight of almost 4 hours (flight time). I have departed alone (leaving SAA22BD behind). He will follow later. St Maarten and St Barths are close together and are two of the most dangerous airports in the world. During this tour, I will point out as we will be visiting them and why they are dangerous with video links to Youtube.com
The term VFR as defined – Visual flight rules (VFR) are a set of regulations under which a pilot operates an aircraft in weather conditions generally clear enough to allow the pilot to see where the aircraft is going. … In a control zone, a VFR flight may obtain a clearance from air traffic control to operate as Special VFR.
Flown route
The Gallery
St Barths ahead
St Barths fly-over
Barbuda/Codrington
Before returning to St Maarten
St Barths from another direction
St Barths
St Barths
Looking at the big ladies – Boeing 747’s at St Maarten
Vacating the runway
Springbok 22BD has landed
Tower view – St Maarten
Cross the Pond – VATSIM Event
VATSIM’s largest event, Cross the Pond, takes place twice a year: once in March and once again in October. As the name implies, the event is all about crossing the pond (the Atlantic Ocean) with full ATC coverage from departure to arrival. It’s an event that has grown year-on-year, with more and more people taking part.
Seeing hundreds of planes fly across the ocean with such unison is exciting and there’s a real sense of community and realism as you see plenty of aircraft light up your TCAS. With the event growing bigger and bigger, we wanted to provide a small guide to help you be as prepared as possible for the event.
One of the ideas, I decided to build a TV antenna out of nothing for my USB television card (mainly used for capturing video cassettes to mp4 files) to receive television frequencies to see what is happening in the world.
What I used was a coaxial plug for the coax, I cleaned off about 30 cm (6 inches) of the cable at one end, which I have split and attached to a 2″ by 2″ piece of wood for a T – shape attached the coaxial plug on the other end. See picture below. Now all I needed to do was to set the USB tv card to the proper channels and voila!!! Unbelievable reception achieved!!!
What I don’t get, what purpose serves this lock down if the following is happening as depicted in the picture below. I just saw on the news on TV where people are being fined and told they are breaking the law by police. As I am watching the news, the figures I see about the virus is making me too scared to go to the shop (once a week) (my basic routine even before the lock-down) to buy the essentials for the coming week.
My point of view regarding the above:
Sharing a vehicle – Not social distancing
Walking your dog in a public street – Social distancing as long as you don’t come in contact with anyone else.
Riding your bicycle in the street – Social distancing as long as you don’t come in contact with anyone else.
Jogging in the street – Social distancing as long as you don’t come in contact with anyone else.
Somewhere, someone must actually wake up and smell the coffee and start to take responsibility and make the right decisions.
My common sense tells me, a car in our lifetime is an essential, now!!!
In this lock-down period, what do you do when your car breaks down and you have the knowledge to repair it yourself, but you are not allowed to buy the basic parts to repair your car.
You own a bicycle and your car breaks down, how do you get to a shop to buy your basic essentials. See the above picture. (Mmm, it really makes you think.)
You stay on an agricultural holding, you do own a horse or two, you are not allowed to get on the horse to go and buy your basic essentials.
Rules and regulations that are implemented which are not sustainable and do not make sense at all.
I stay on an agricultural holding (Thank you, God) and I have the privilege to take my dogs for a jog on the property, sad to see people living in town where they are actually “prisoners” to their own properties. That is where the following in the above picture is actually happening.
I am reading all the news (yes – fake and false as well, but that I do take that with a pinch of salt),
For those working for a non-essential company – “Where do you stay?” My friend, you stay at home!
The internet is big and you can have fun, but (my famous words) BE SAFE.
A bit useless information
Have you ever had a look at flightradar24.com and saw “funny round like – see picture below” objects floating above the earth, I was curious about these objects. I did a bit of Googling about this and found out it is balloons that floats above the earth between FL550 (55000ft and FL650 (65000ft), according to what I have read and videos I have seen on Youtube, it supplies internet to places where internet is required where the infrastructure does not allow internet.
I stumbled onto this article “How Google Loon Works“, I did some reading on this and decided this will be very interesting to publish on this blog.
My day started off as a normal working day with the same usual routine. Woke up as normal at about 5:30am (SAST), made coffee, let the dogs out for their usual routine with a load bark to tell every “Mom is up”.
Switched on my desktop computer to do some honest work, for a change. Oh yes, some of us do have to work. At about 1020 SAST, I have heard a very familiar sound, a C130 flying over overhead, quickly I checked flightradar24.com to see where it is coming from and where it going, to my disappointment, nothing there, must have been a military one. That is for obvious reasons, no-one should actually know where the flight originated or where to it is going.
Well, continued with my work…
Don’t spread false or fake information
People tend to share false information and cause panic. It is not right to cause panic by spreading false information.
I like Facebook and I know people just to click and share, please be careful in what you share.
By clicking and sharing, you can also compromise your own privacy. I have seen so many people complaining on Facebook “My account is hacked”.
Remember, you can be traced, even it is sent from your cellular phone.
There are very clever people out there who specializes in this, please, Dont do it. Believe me, I don’t want to be in your shoes when found.
I have found an article on dailymaverick.co.za (read more here) about this topic which I found quite interesting. I have found quite a list regarding the spreading of false or fake news, I am not going to mention it here, you can just merely Google it.
Remember by spreading false or fake news you will cause unnecessary panic and confusion.
Enough said about this.
On a lighter and brighter side of the lock-down
You can do quite a few of this whilst in lock-down, ie. making your own bread, I have started my own little herb garden which contains parsley, spring unions, etc.
You don’t need to stay on a farm or an agricultural holding to do this, you can do this even if you are staying in a flat and you have space to put down some pots or even empty 2 litre softdrink bottles cut open in half. More on this a bit later (please come back)
Meanwhile on the Ndizani world tour – Day 3
The replacement parts have arrived, Ndizani is repaired. We have enjoyed the hospitality of Bogota.
It is time to turn and burn or “kick the tyres and light the fires”
Our next leg on this tour will take us to Los Angeles (city of Angels), can not figure it out why it’s called that.
Athena's Little Airport 