Wild animals come and go along the year. Nowadays hundreds of zebras are hanging around Endulen in the Ngorongoro area, that includes the airstrip or the hospital where I get a room with a nice view. Anyway zebras are a hazard for any aircraft so when we come and land in the bush we always overfly the airstrip and chase whatever we can spot on it. It varies from snakes to elephants with anything in between.
Sometimes 3 or 4 low passes are required, not all the animals react the same way so one has to develop some skills, similar to the flying cowboys in Australia or western USA. That didn’t prevent me from hitting a gazelle and a wildebeest in the past, without damage to the aircraft it must be said. The same cannot be said for the poor gazelle. The wildebeest escaped!
This is Endulen airstrip… It’s obvious any obstacle on such a ‘large’ runway can’t be avoided by “driving” on the sides.
Here are a few zebras, part of a much larger herd scattered around. The best thing is to corral them, to circle around, not split them as they’ll get scared and gather again, most likely on the strip by Murphy’s Law.
It’s not meant to be but this is great fun, fly low, really low and fast.
Turning towards the airstrip… the white and blue thing on the left hand side of the picture is the nose of the aircraft.
Diving and flying across the strip…
Yesterday and the day before? 3 and 4 passes respectively. Some of the passengers don’t enjoy too much unfortunately.
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