Finished off the nav calculations, but took a little longer than hoped. I met Daniel and we finished off the flight plans before filing them. A FP has to be filed half-an-hour before takeoff. We got in the aircraft and I went through the start up procedure. While starting the engine, there was a massive bang! Daniel immediately shut everything off and another instructor appeared; who'd heard the commotion from his office. After checking the engine and exhaust over we took the aircraft to the AMO. I thought that our nav was kibosh'd, but luckily the engineer said it was fit to fly, but to bring it back to the AMO after!

All in all, we took off about an hour later than planned. But once we were airborne things began to go well. I plotted three checkpoints on our direct path to Queenstown. While travelling through absolutely awesome mountain ranges, it was satisfying to see our Estimated Time of Arrival at each point be correct down to the minute! Something not possible with a car and roads! When we got to Queenstown, I made two landings before climbing out and around the mountains surrounding it.

Now was the low level part of the exercise. We overflew Cathcart on route to Bisho; 43's new second home. Two landings were planned, but as we took off later than planned, we needed to cut short our visit to one touch and go. Then it was back towards Port Alfred and lunch!

For my first proper nav, it went fairly well and was immensely enjoyable. I did take my camera, but I'm afraid that we were too busy to get any photos!

In the evening we went out to Guido's, and then Oddfellow's. It was quiet compared to normal, apparently everyone is having a bad month. We did our best in giving Steve a good send off. Paul preferred to stay on base. I managed to have a fight with the ground again, this time outside by Neale's Bucky(pickup). Nice big scratch on one of my glasses lenses, and on my face! My bloody legs are definitely getting worse.