On Monday 17 September 2018, seven of the eight participants of the first 4Aviation tour to South Africa gathered at Schiphol, prior to boarding the KLM flight to Johannesburg. The flight was long and mostly boring, as flights tend to be. After landing at Johannesburg in the evening we met the final participant. The rental van was ready to take us to the guest house where would stay for the duration of the tour.
After a good night’s sleep and a very good breakfast, the first thing to do on Tuesday (18 September) was to collect our media-badges. To do so we headed for the officers club, where it took quite some time for the badges to be collected. Still, after receiving them, it took just very little time before we ended up on the terrain of the Africa Aerospace and Defence (AAD) at Waterkloof. The sun was shining brightly and the atmosphere was very relaxed. This atmosphere helped in being able to take a lot of good pictures of the static aircraft that had arrived already (including the Zimbabwean K-8 and C-212 and the 8-bladed USAF LC-130R) and several visiting SAAF aircraft (C-130s, PC-12, A109). All in all a good start of the tour. This was celebrated by enjoying a dinner in the city, followed by a relaxed evening by the pool of our guest house. With the 4Aviation group occupying all rooms, we had all services to ourselves.
