My Flying

A light blowing South-Easter meant that we could soar our ridge for the middle part of the day. My half an hour flight soaring to a maximum of 800 feet (above runway elevation) over the ridge made up for the frustration of arriving first at the field at 9am and only getting my turn to fly at about 3pm later that afternoon.

Google Earth

The winch launches were not good from the shorter 16L with the light wind blowing and my best launch was 800 feet. The instructor F(1) was a little conservative on the launches and didn't enjoy any climbing angles of more than about 35° to 40°.

I also enjoyed three short flights of about 4 minutes each in which I practiced my circuits and landing. I still find flaring a little tricky and the unusually high flare with the resulting high pitch of the nose during the final touch down, used by this instructor, was a little unusual for me as it resulted in the tail wheel touch down well early of the main wheel.

Back to the ridge soaring! It was amazing and I thoroughly enjoyed it. The two aspects I enjoyed the most were (a) the low altitude, a few times we dropped below the top of the ridge and (b) the soaring with two other gliders which made for lots of looking out and keeping an eye on the other planes. As the ridge is rather short, about 2km long, it resulted in some nice close flying. Sorry no pictures, but next time!!!

So I got a little closer to handling the landings and learnt some ridge soaring techniques, some rules of the air and a bit more about neat turns. All in all a well 212,00ZAR spent.