My Flying

Five enjoyable short winter flights with instructor F(2). The first two were from 08R in very calm conditions, so we flew very long shallow approaches. Felt a little odd, as I am more used to the higher steeper approaches when the wind is blowing.

We then moved to 26L when the wind changed more westerly and increased in strength. My take offs were good and this time I was ready with hard right rudder when the plane started to weather cock into the 30 odd degree cross wind. My instructor was impressed and so was I. Only thing was that my climbs were a little steep, mainly because the winch was pulling like crazy and I was trying to keep the speed below 120 km/h. With the last launch I exceeded my record when I released at 1325 feet.

During these last three flights we also practised some stalls, nice shallow gentle ones; went very well.

The instructor also demonstrated some steep stalls. Feel the G’s man. He first stalled at about 35° degrees, so the nose goes down steeply, so he builds up speed, pulls hard out of the bottom of the dive and climbs into a 45° climb. When the plan stalls, it's like into an instant 60° plus dive from which he recovers it. All very enjoyable, the G forces were nasty though and he tells me later that it was only about 2Gs

Nasty, but also very enjoyable!

Landings went off well enough, especially the last one were he tells me he didn't touch anything. So I'm happy, but still a long way to go. So that's five short ones totalling 220.00ZAR.

Oh yes, day started with a free 18 minute pax flight in the Motor Falke. Was also at the controls for a short while, doing so straight and level flying with some gentle turns. Very lekker.