My Flying

Not much to report today. Not many people arrived at the club, but fortunately the duty crew did; well the important ones. By the time all was ready the wind had picked up to 25 km/h and was gusting 35.

Two nice launches from 26L to 1000 feet, 5 minutes of soaring in a strong but very broken thermal, and a high circuit (to miss the sink on the edge of the plateau at the threshold of 26) to land.

I think the landings went off very well considering the gusty conditions. I kept the speed up (between 110 and 120 km/h), full brakes with half brakes about 10m up for a nice long gentle float in.

The second landing was nice and interesting. With pre-landings checks during the downwind I noticed that the bakkie that was retrieving the cable was heading back to the launch point. As the finals were very short and we floated in we touch down about 20m in front of the vehicle. It had stopped and pulled into the bush on the side, but I still had to touch down well right of the centreline and the instructor veered us right while rolling to a stop, Not very safe in my books. The left wing couldn't have missed the bakkie by more than 5 meters.

Never-the-less, as the wind was picking up the instructor called it a day with two flights totalling 11 minutes at ZAR89,90.