It all started with a post on a

Cosmos 2009 Fly-in at Rhino Park

It all started with a post on a web forum asking where a good place would be for a weekend fly-in to go and look at the yearly Cosmos flower event in our part of the world.

I offered the use of my local flying field, Rhino Park, because it is a great field in nature with all the facilities needed to host the even and not very far from where we know the Cosmos flowers bloom in abundance every year.

So plans were made, we had many months before the flowering season but soon the time arrived. A couple of pilots flew in early the Friday morning already but most only arrived the Saturday morning. It was very windy on Friday so we spent the day chatting and looking at planes. That evening we had a nice braai and all managed to get to bed before 11pm to be ready at dawn the next day for the expedition.

During the night the wind dropped and Saturday dawned quiet with only a few small patches of fog in the low lying areas. By 6am (Sunrise 06:18) the first planes were in the air. I flew the Rans S12 along with a friend Louwtjie as co-pilot so that I could spend some time taking photos. When you fly low it is not advisable to fiddle with a camera !

Sunrise Saturday morning, on our way to go look for the flowers.

Since we had planes flying with vastly different performances we ended flying in more than one group, the Rans along with 2 Gyro copters went first because we were the fastest. The plan was that we would scout for the best flower locations and relay the information to the other planes so that they could fly directly to the flowers and not waste time looking.

Leon flying next to us.

At first we thought that we might be a bit late to see the best flowers of the season since the first flower fields we saw were past their best but soon we found some stunning fields.

And then we saw them !!

We saw field after field of Cosmos flowers in full bloom, since the area we were flying in was quite flat and without any wires and few trees we could fly very low quite safely, at a few meters above the ground you could smell he flowers, an amazing experience !

Flowers flowers everywhere !

Some low level flower inspection.

Some places we could get so low the landing gear almost touched the flowers, flying low and slow like this (around 65 mph) is really special.

Flying formation with Juanita and her daughter..

Nice view on the way home.

There was still some fog about, we flew back to Rhino Park via Bronkhorst spruit dam, the dam was covered with fog, an amazing sight.

A very happy Jason taxing back.

By the time we got back there were more planes on the ground, some arriving from fields all around.

The Cobra invation.

Time to eat !

We had breakfast organized back at Rhino, as the pilots landed they were treated to a nice meal and everyone had a story to tell about the flowers he/she saw.

My camera ship.

The Rans S12 is perfect for this kind of expedition, it can fly slowly safely and the visibility is great for taking photos with no propeller in the way to spoil any photos.

We even had some larger planes like this Cessna 172 visit.

Below is the track I flew, this will give anyone who want to go and look for the Cosmos fields an idea where to go.

Next year we will hold the Cosmos 2010 fly-in a week earlier, that way we should see even more stunning flower fields.