First Ever Gravity Artwork

The world's first ever artwork made with gravity and an airplane! We think the spray may have actually been caused by Derek's 'elegant' landing and not gravity (watch the video), but it's still so beautiful! The G-Shirt version will be available in 2 weeks.

Charlie Experiment Video

You need to read the post below to get a context for this video. It's been cut from 40 minutes down to only 5 minutes. Listen out for the engine failure (engine noise changes about 1 minute in) and be sure to stay for the fire trucks at the end - this is a rare occurrence! The radio communication breaks up a bit because there was a lot of traffic. We got the radio recording from Lanseria Air Traffic Control, thanks guys, you rock!

The Charlie Experiment Gets Dangerous

What started as an art experiment today became a real life aviation emergency. We flew to the Magaliesberg and at 7000ft Masha took control of the aircraft and orchestrated a series of perfect 60degree steep turns while Derek released paint on the gravity-art canvas. More on this in a later post...

When the paint was up we decided to head back to Lanseria Airport. Derek took over and started a decent to 6000ft by throttling back on the power. Masha opened the carburetor heat to prevent icing and every pilots biggest fear ensued... loss of engine power.

Now you dont need to be a pilot to figure that a loss of engine power in a single-engine aircraft is bad! Masha switched to fix-it mode by trying every possible combination of failure recovery procedure, but the aircraft just wouldn't hear of it. So, we contacted the control tower, declared an emergency and started preparing for an emergency landing in the fields of the Magaliesberg.

After battling for 5minutes and losing altitude while scoping a suitable place to put the aircraft down, all the time trying to recover the engine, she came alive!

They say the three most useless things to a pilot is sky above, runway behind and 1 second ago. Using the partial engine power, we started a climb (the higher you are, the further you can glide if the engine fails again). By 8000ft (illegal in that area - we were given permission due to the circumstance) we began our journey back to Lanseria. We managed to return and put her wheels down (quite hard, no thanks to Derek) on runway 24Right. The fire trucks were waiting, lights flashing and on the taxiway. This is a rare, cool thing to see.

What went wrong? A carburetor air-box blah blah seal malfunction too clever to explain in this blog. Instead, here's a pic of the technician about to remove the engine cowling...

And the gravity-art?... well, we think it is absolutely brilliant. Considering the lengths we've been to to capture the image, along with a killer story to tell, its a masterpiece. Next post will be the video...

The Charlie Experiment - Starts Here

Using bits bought from a local harware store, we set out having the first rig built. A light-weight tray, some rubber pipe, a massive syringe and black water-based paint. The canvas is laid in the tray, the syringe loaded with paint and the rig mounted in the rear of a Cessna C172 aircraft.


The plan is to release paint onto the canvas while placing the aircraft into spiral dives, steep turns and other such manoeuvres creating G forces between -1.5G and +3G. With a bit of luck the paint should go flying around the cockpit and hopefully spread on the canvas or at least make a mess. We're confident it will be the latter...

Weather permitting, flight leaves 9am Wednesday 9 May 2007 from Lanseria International Airport. Paint release at 7000ft overhead the Magaliesberg General Flying Area. Will post the results...