Hi RainierI have been wanting to write to you quite badly for the past few days. In fact I wrote you quite a story yesterday but somehow lost it in posting and was p….. off as my typing speed is a bit slow to quickly bang out another. I want to let you know just

This morning Jean and I woke up at 09h30 local time, just missing the hotel breakfast. We shared a double bed last night for the first time on the trip – in every other hotel we’ve had a room with two beds, as it’s cheapest and most convenient. Up to now Phuket Air Park has

Exactly 30 hours ago Jean and I were settled into a ‘Dang Beach Bugalow’ room planning dinner on the beach at the beautiful Nai Yang, just off the threshold of runway 09 at Phuket Thailand, followed by an early night. Then the Taiwan the Singaporean permissions came in over my cellphone, the weather suddenly looked

James has just called to say they are down and happy and are being taken care of by very friendly Taiwanese officials. Apart from some naughty cb’s which they had to dodge in the moonlight for a few hours after take off, the flight went really well and the plane performed absolutely flawlessly. Well done

Boy-o-boy it was a busy day. I lost count of the calls to J & J today and Michelle from Flight Permits (who worked on the permissions all day). At one point I received this e-mail from Michelle: Dear Michelle, To be honest with you, your aircraft is the lightest aircraft ever fly into Taiwan.

Right now as I type this I’m sitting on my bed in a lovely palm frond-thatched guesthouse at the Phuket Air Park. Thanks Suchard (Robert) Raksongob, a keen aviator-businessman and the developer of the Air Park who has made this our home from home for the past two days. We really are being looked after

OK, so we’ve just filed our flightplan to Taipei. We leave Phuket at 11pm local time, 1600Z (18h00 in SA). Weather again a bit dodgy, especially at the start, and then over the Vietnam peninsula. Oh well, Vietnam wouldn’t allow us through their airspace except in the day anyhow, so we’re going the long way

James & Jean have decided to postpone departure to tomorrow evening at 6pm (SA local time) on the 17th of August due to not having received permission back from Taipei yet. Updates will be given during the course of tomorrow.

Jean and I have just received the terrible news that the two Albatrosses that were at the Tzaneen airshow have been missing for two days. Our thoughts are with the families of all the passengers.

Just a quick update to let you know that after a good rest at Patong Beach yesterday we’re off to the airport to do a short hop over to Robert Suchard’s airpark 8.5 nm away, radial 140! (500m grass strip which we’ve also checked out on Google Earth). There we’ve got a reception tonight, we