WATCH: Sling High Wing heroes welcomed at Tedderfield Airpark
Great atmosphere as slingers, friends, family and supporters welcome home ZU-SHW, high-wing heroes and the celebration of the 1 000th Sling aircraft sale.
Slingers, friends, family and supporters came together to welcome home the Sling High Wing (SHW) heroes as they touched down at Tedderfield Airpark in Eikenhof, as well as to celebrate the sale of the 1 000th Sling aircraft on November 12.
This follows the lengthy travels of James Pitman, Juan Peter Schulze, Linda Sollars, Matt Cohen and Mike Blyth from Sling HQ in South Africa to AirVenture Oshkosh in Wisconsin, USA.
ZU-SHW was finally abandoned at the Popham Airshow in the UK from where the Sling UK distributor, Tim Hardy, flew her back to Top Farm. He was then flown back to South Africa by the Dutch couple, Rosita Smeenk (‘Pilot Bambi’) and her partner Maurits Maters.
Rosita and Maurits are YouTube filmmakers. Having completed their journey to South Africa, they will be making a series of short movies about their en-route adventures.
To date, their journey has taken them from their home airfield, Hilversum in Holland, to Austria, Italy, Crete, Egypt, Sudan, Kenya and Tanzania. The journey continued from Kilimanjaro to Dar es Salaam and through Malawi and Zambia. On November 8, they met a Sling welcome party at Camp Kalahari in Botswana, including four of the ‘Joburg-to-Oshkosh’ crew, James, Linda, Matt and Mike, in three Slings, accompanied by friends and family.
They met again on November 12 at the homecoming celebration at Sling HQ where the squadron, a Sling 2, Sling TSi, ZU-SHW and the prototype SHW Taildragger, ZU-TDR, landed at Tedderfield Airpark.
James said, “Our relationship with Mike dates back 20 years. We appreciate what happened in between. We are celebrating the sale of 1 000th sling aircraft and our arrival back home after the great journey of the prototype SHW aircraft.
“We flew to AirVenture Oshkosh in Wisconsin, USA, crossed to Europe, back to England and back here. Mike and I are chance-takers. We don’t like to fail at anything. That’s why we went to Botswana to fetch her. You can see she is in the back of the trailer as she didn’t make it over to the Magaliesburg this afternoon. It has been a wonderful path from our first meeting to tonight.”
Mike added, “We started making two sling aircraft in 2005. James and I have been partners since 2007. Later on, we made a Sling 4, also a fantastic aircraft. From there we develop the Sling TSi and more recently the best design ever is the SHW. We fly this aircraft a lot.
“Thank you to everybody – my business partners, employees, South African Civil Aviation Authority, supporters, customers and families.”
Maurits said, “Thank you Mike and James for entrusting us to bring back SHW from such a journey. Two youngsters from the Netherlands are allowed to bring such an aircraft back through east Africa.
“We have no experience doing such a trip we are not experienced pilots.”
Rosita noted, “We would like to thank the Sling team. We are eternally indebted to you for building this incredible aircraft which performed wonderfully. We had no problems on the journey and felt safe. The team can be very proud of that. And we are grateful to be here to celebrate with you.”
