0500 and my alarm goes off. I’ve had a comfortable 8 hours of sleep, not stressed surprisingly even though I am slightly anxious about the day ahead.

It’s been almost 3 years since I first started my training as a pilot with 0 hours, today I get to fly all the way from South Africa to Zimbabwe. The craziest part of it all is I don’t have to pay anymore but someone is paying me! Yes this is my first job and I still can’t quite fathom the idea.

Today’s flight will take me from Lanseria where I did almost all of my training through the northern part of South Africa into Botswana where a fuel stop is planned and from there we fly to Harare in Zimbabwe. This will be the first time I fly out of South Africa myself and it is a bit daunting. I’m not sure what to expect at customs or immigration when flying myself and having to do all the paperwork.

Customs I quickly learn at Lanseria is pretty simple, they require 2 forms and even if you made a mistake or two were willing to help. With that hurdle out of the way I step onto the apron to meet our cargo handling agent, all his paperwork is in order so time to load the plane.

There seem to be fewer boxes than what I expected when I looked through the cargo manifest but I soon realize it’s not as much the size of the boxes but the weight. One of the bearings weighed 101kgs by itself and so the jigsaw puzzle of loading the aircraft was attempted.

After some more shuffling around of cargo and moving the seats around a bit we are ready for departure. 30minutes before our official planned departure but we decided to give it a try. Luckily ATC allowed us to start and we taxied down for takeoff. Run-ups completed, briefings done and ATC clearance received and read back we lined up on runway 07 and took off. From the last time I flew The aircraft to now, she is around 400kgs heavier so we rotate and attempt to climb, we barely manage to get 300ft a minute climb and the airspeed is around 90knots. At this stage I’m wondering if we will make it to 9000ft as planned and if this flight was a good idea. Luckily 20minutes later we made it to 9000ft and managed to cruise along nicely at 110knots to our first stop Francistown, Botswana.

With 15minutes to go to Francistown we start our decent with the field in sight, luckily it was a beautiful morning for flying because I honestly was not keen to fly a DME arc arrival into Francistown.the landing goes smoothly, probably the best landing I’ve done thus far in the C207. I soon realize that a few of Africa’s airports have been upgraded to expect big aero planes to land there and cater for high volume traffic that just never happened. We had the entire Francistown airport to ourselves, so after refueling and paying the ramp agent we set off to Harare.

Here’s is where the lessons start coming thick and fast, obtaining a clearance at one of these airports isn’t your frantic scribbling of notes, but rather a very relaxed and uncomplicated instruction that tower will just read to you when he seems fit. After takeoff I then realize no squawk code was issued, this is soon realize doesn’t matter as there is no radar, so transponder on or off it doesn’t make a difference.

A few minutes later the controlled starts asking me for an ETA to the TMA boundary, this is where the fun starts, so because there is no radar, controllers will ask you for estimates when you cross every TMA boundary, entering or leaving, and abeam, overhead or on what radial to specific stations. Having done the planning and expecting similar flying as in South Africa, this caught me off-guard and a few “uhm standby” moments were encountered while I quickly scrambled to workout the relevant information. Luckily apart from some cloud starting to form at around 9500ft, the weather was gorgeous and we had Harare airport insight from 50nm out.

It was an incredible days flying, one that I’ll never forget with lessons learnt and experience gained! I cannot wait for my next flight to see what it has in store for me on this beautiful vastly diverse continent!