De Wet Steyl passed away

My parents were visiting us at the Dam for a week and on Friday the 17^th of August my father called me early in the morning to inform me that his older brother – my uncle, De Wet Steyl passed away.

De Wet was the second oldest of four brothers and he was 83 years old. Over the Last Eight years he was suffering from a stroke and although he understood everything that was going on around him, he could not communicate with people, except for his immediate family with whom he developed a sort of coded communication.

De Wet was married to Nancy for 59 years and had three children Barbara Cathy and Christopher. Chris has been living in the USA for the last 20 years or more and he flew out to be with his mother for a few days.

On Tuesday afternoon at 14:30 a service was held in the chapel at Rosehaven where Christopher paid a moving tribute to his father.

End of Winter

As can be seen on the image below where I am standing on the snowswept stairs to the aircraft, it has been a hard cold winter in South Africa - this was on the morning of the 27th of June this year and since we are not used to this and geared for snow it took us nearly two hours to clear the wings and tail of the Boeing 727 of ice and snow with the help of the Fire trucks


We then flew down to Cape Town and back and was greeted by a Johannesburg covered in snow, something that only happens every 30 odd years.

Over the last few months we as a family was very busy Louis still flying in Zimbabwe and Johan Jr in Namibia, Juanita has been home for a while but is now on a trip to Rwanda - Tanzania - Germany - Malawi and then America.

My own schedule was rather hectic as I had to go for my annual simulator training early in July and this year it was in Bournemouth in the UK. At the end of July after only 4 days at home I did another trip to West Africa and only returned last week. Both these trips were marked with unusual weather - the well publicized floods in the UK occurred while I was there and disrupted everything especially flights from Heathrow. In the photo me and Flt Eng. Mike Melton and First Officer Steve Brits is standing in front of the simulator - for the non aviation types, this is a instrument that can drain all your energy out of you in a very short period (normal sessions are 2 hours a short break and another 2 hours) also known as a sweatbox and various other nicknames. As you can imagine, not most pilots favourite machine to operate but a very effective training tool, where engine fires, hydraulic failures and malfunctioning control surfaces are "normal"!

The tour to Monrovia had just as much rain but it was less disruptive since they experience an annual rainfall of 6000mm or SIX Meters and the drainage over the years have been shaped to accommodate the amount of water.

I have now been back in SA for a week and thank goodness the winter is at its end. We have put our house on the market and in this area property only really sells in the summer.

This coming week my Brothers and father are going on a hunting trip for Blesbuck Springbuck and Kudu in the Northern Cape near Kimberley, I cant make it, but Louis has flown down specially for this from Harare so in my next post I hope to tell about their experiences to get some biltong for their respective families.