A Blue Goose,our African Queen

While pondering our choices for Little Bird we've, once again, grabbed a Goose for our long awaited Congo adventure.

One of our must see places on the African continent is Victoria Falls. Our plan is to take this old Blue Grumman Goose and follow the falls water source from the top of Africa (Lake Victoria, Tanzania) down the continent into Zimbabwe. We've named this Goose our African Queen.

We’ll fly "The Queen" South over Lake Tanganyika to Lake Malawi then turn towards 260 to follow the Zambezi River to Victoria Falls. We will divert, when needed, towards the nearest fuel/rest stop.

Due to Linda’s …stuff …we are only able to carry 83% of our max fuel load. This is after cutting her …stuff weight …to 50% of what we’ve been carrying in Little Bird. I convinced her to do so by saying “…and besides baby, regardless of your supplies I guarantee you’ll be the prettiest woman flying over the Congo in a Grumman Goose”. She may have rolled her eyes but she did smile and cut her payload by 150 pounds.

Our African Queen

We left HTKJ and headed west towards Lake Victoria. We landed at the marina in Musoma, a town named after the spit its on (The name Musoma comes from the word Omusoma which means, a spit ...who'd of thought).

Musoma

Musoma is as far north as we’ll go on Lake Victoria. From here our flight path turns south. A little slower, a little lower and married to our fuel gauges.

Our adventure continues.

…also, if we can find runways without a turn in the middle of them …that’d be great.

Hey Buddy ...wanna buy a bird

Little Bird got us from Nosy-Be to HTKJ (Tanzania) as easily as piloting a daily driver to the local store. Our ILS landing and stop on 09 was textbook.


We have our desired adventures lined up and ready to share ...and then; some fictional/non-fictional character named Al comes to us and says ...hey buddy, nice bird ...why didn't you buy a fast one?

As an extra added attraction we flew around Kilimanjaro in a new open Jet Ranger with floats. After all it was 30 degrees C outside. We quickly learned the harsh reality of being a sim pilot ...just because it looks like it can float does not mean the programmer wrote "floating" into the code.

 

To upgrade Little Bird or not ...we do love our modified Learjet.

The Citation X is going to have to go a long way to change our minds, especially in the middle of the African continent.

More to follow.

Nosy-Be via Ave of Baobabs …A Turbulent Time

 

About 160 million years ago Madagascar decided it didn’t like being a part of the African continent ...so it split.

Madagascar is the 4^th largest island on the planet. Basically it's a small mountain range surrounded by a beach. The warm waters, mixture of jet streams, uneven terrain, plus a thunderstorm or two made our Madagascar flights less than comfortable. It was a turbulent time for us. We like our Tequila Sunrise stirred, not shaken.

We crossed the Arabian Sea to Ivato Int. (FMMI). It’s  located mid island and is several kilometers west of the capital city of Madagascar, Antananarivo. From FMMI we flew a Twin Beach to Morondava to see the Ave of the Baobabs. It is amazing to us that these rare trees are not protected. Some of them are up to 800 years old. They are threatened by further deforestation, waste water from encroaching rice paddies & sugarcane plantations, bush and forest fires.

 

Our flight back to Ivato was just as rough as our flight out earlier in the day.

We had hoped for a smoother flight to Nosy Be. FL29 was no party either. Albeit impressive to watch, an electrical storm over Madagascar is not fun to fly through.

 

We landed at FMNN in 15 MPH cross winds with low cloud cover and rain obscuring our runway visibility until about 2 miles out. Trusting your numbers is simple ...it's just not easy. This 737 driver makes it look easy.

 

We are looking forward to a few days on the beach at The Andilana Resort on Nosy Be. From here we’re off to the African continent.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Our adventure continues.