Tedderfield Sling Aircraft Tour & Breakfast Fly In
By Willie Bodenstein
Google Banner Ad
15.03.2025
Saturday morning and again aviators were spoiled for choice as to where to go to for breakfast or just for a chat with friends. One, and always a popular one, was the monthly free breakfast fly in at Tedderfield Airpark to the south of Johannesburg that beside the breakfast also included a guided tour through the extensive facilities of the Sling's factory.
The other was a breakfast fly in with overnight camping hosted by the Johannesburg Light Plane Club at Baragwanath Airport at Syferfontein, also to the south and only a short hop away from Tedderfield. JLPC is currently the oldest flying club in the world that are still operational and their events are always very popular.
The weather with low clouds and a rather nasty cold wind turned out to be for me the deciding factor of which I would attend. I decided to visit Tedderfield which is the closest to where I stay and I arrived rather early excepting not to find any visitors by air but was rather surprised to find a number of visiting aircraft on the grass apron.
Amongst them was Derek and Maureen Hopkins from Eagles Creek and Rudi Greyling and his wife Anel from the Coves as well as Trevor Davids from Fly In Estates.
The coffee, as always was delicious and the hotdogs, a change from the usual Boerie Rolls delicious. I met up with Francois Marais who is one of the partners in the Pegasus, (Peggy to her friends), syndicate. (Read more about this unique once off at www.pilotspost.com/PsPpyarn2191
Francois and Caroline had invited me to spend rest of the weekend with them and he had arrived to do some circuits and landings in Peggy and having finished breakfast we went to Ian Beaton's hanger where Peggy shares space with Ian's superbly built Rv10 and Rv7, an equally stunning KFA Safari and a Sling 4 amongst others.
While at the field I also used the opportunity to attend a section of the very informative and judging by the number of others in the group, the very popular Sling guided factory tour.
Andrew Pittman told me that they currently deliver between 16 and 18 aircraft per month. The break down of this impressive number is between 8 to 10 ready to flies and between 8 to 10 quick build kits, On the ready to fly side the breakdown is 5 low wing trainers per month on final assembly and either 1 or 2 Tsi's on final assembly. The immensely successful highway currently stands at 3 per month but will increase to 4 per month form April.
The high wing currently accounts for 60% of quick built kit production with the Tsi taking up the remaining 40%. They, he said, are currently ramping up on production to enable them to deliver 24 per month starting 1 June. When we spoke, they had a total of 260 aircraft on order of which 200 needs to be delivered over the next three years.
Impressive figures indeed!!
Back at the hangar a partly build Pietenpol being pushed out of a hangar caught my eye and I walked over and what a treasure trove it turned out be! Already outside was a Fairchild and an Auster Autocar while a Saab Safir was inside the hangar.
The aircraft were all projects that were entrusted to Restoration Aero for completion. The quality of work done on them was in incredible! For more in information please feel free to contact me at willieb@pilotspost.com
Now a regular monthly feature on the aviation calendar the breakfast, camaraderie and Sling tour makes the rather unique Tedderfield Fly in a must visit!
.jpg)
