The check flight with the flight instructor was set to be done between 7 and 9 in the morning. When we finally got to Nelspruit airport the clock was showing 15 minutes past the hour, which is really stupid! I hate being late.

Clayton, the flight instructor who was going to do the validation was not happy about our late arrival, but he was professional and didn't let it affect the procedure in any way. We took of, did a few touch and go's, flew a bit cross country, tried to stall the 182 - which is virtually impossible - got it into a spin a couple of times and practised a forced landing. It all went fine (the landings were a bit on the fast side though). To use Claytons own words, I "flew like a bird". Nice to hear.

After the practical part I did the open book the air law examn. No problem either.

We flew back to the Bush Pilots Airbase where we picked up Linda before we continued to fly for about 1 1/2 hours to get to Lanseria airport west of Joburg.

While Attie, a good friend of CC's, and the owner of Golden Wings, had the plane taken appart in order to replace the defective magneto part, CC and I drove to the CAA office, which is about 1/2 hour away. It took pretty exactly one hour to process my validation application. CC found this to be quick whilst I thought it was rather slow, but then again I'm not used to public offices in South Africa - and thinking about it, the European ones actually are often not particularily more efficient.

When we got back to the airport we learnt that the replacement of the part hadn't made a difference. The magneto was still sometimes was running rough. Attie now believed the coil was the perpetraitor. The shop that sells coils however was closed by this time, so we all stayed over at Atties place, which was really nice. Attie is a great cook and had tons of interesting stuff in stock. Kudu and Gemsbook were the highlights. A flattie (which is slang for a BBQ-chicken) was also served. Can't remember when we last ate this much meat.

validation process

The process of getting the south african validation should theoretically be possible to get done on the day of arrival (provided you arrive in the morning of course). All you need to do is a check and cross-country flight with a certified instructor and an open book air- law examn. The air-law examn you don't even really need to prepare for. The questions (not mulitple choice) are fairly simple. I got 93% correct without any preparation whatsoever (80% is pass if I remember correctly). If you do want to prepare for this test check out the CAA web site - the air law book is published there in its completeness (I think). The cross country flight you might need to do a little planning for (weather, frequencies, notam, etc.), but a couple of hours should do just fine and most of it could be done days in advance, if you get somebody to send you the necessary maps, charts and papers. Once you have passed the practical and theoretical tests you'll get the validation certificate from CAA. This can either happen by mail, which obviously will take some days and add uncertainty to when you actually do hold the validation in you hands or you personally go to the CAA office in Johannesburg and get it done immediately (processing time for my license was about an hour which is twice as much as they had said it would take and half as much as CC had anticipated). So if everything is well-organised, you can get the validation out of your way very quickly. But this is Africa and not Switzerland. In other words - you can not count on things always beeing well organised.