The breakfast trip that turned out different than planned !

This morning Henni (Flying a Mizer with a Rotax 582) and myself (Flying a Rans S12 with a Rotax 618) left Rhino Park early, heading for Witbank and the monthly club breakfast.

When we left Rhino the weather looked ok with a bit of wind but nothing to worry about. All was well in the world ! For a while..... Then we saw this on the horizon, not to bad yet but I took note of the fact that things are changing.



Soon the horizon became dark, by the time we were past Bronkhorstspruit more fluffy clouds were forming below us and I started thinking about options, if the cloud cover below us increased we would have to consider turning back or descending below it.



Not long and it looked like this .



Now there was no way I was going to get stuck above this lot! I decided that I will have a look below, a quick decent from 6500 to below 5500 produced a gap to fly in, there was still hope ! A bit of flying around low cloud bases and a few hills got us closer but by the time we were about 5 miles from Witbank we had a solid wall before us and a dropping ceiling. I have no photos of this as I was WAY to busy flying the plane and trying to find a way around. I decided to give Henni a call and suggest we turn around, at that moment I got a call on the radio from Dawid (A flying friend from Microland) informing me that they spoke to someone at Witbank and there was a heavy storm over the field, they were turning around (at that stage they were still at Bronkhorstspruit) and heading to an alternative field with better weather, that sure made up my mind for me !

We did a VERY quick 180 and headed for lighter skies ! Even so we still had to negotiate a few clouds there were very low and in our way but soon things were getting lighter, I sure was happy to see the sun again.

Here Henni is escaping the "gloom and doom". At least there is a lighter strip on the horizon.





We then decided to follow the Microlanders to Afsaal, a landing strip towards the North West that is located on a game farm, bathed in beautiful sunshine, arriving there we found a few trikes and a Gyro (from Kittyhawk)



Here is WOG and AEN enjoying the sun after our little "adventure lesson"



From there back to Rhino and a good breakfast and chat about our shared adventure and lessons learned !

I think the lesson was that you have to be so careful with the weather, it can close in real fast and you can end up in a VERY bad situation !

So that was the Witbank breakfast that was not, maybe next month ? Lets hope !