My Flying

A day rather to forget. Yet another calm almost windless Sunday morning, ideal to be set loose alone in the skies, but no. The winch driver doesn’t pitch, so to keep things moving I volunteer to take the first stint of winch duty.

The first two launches were a mess. I’ve been told to rev the V8 to 4500 rpm. The first launch gets a ridiculous 300 feet or something, so the CFI comes down to my end to check out the next launch. The pilot pulls the plug as he’s going way too slow. Now I’m told that you can rev the engine all the way up to 7000 rpm. So the third launch goes well, this time without the 120kg student.

For the forth launch (student on board) the cable breaks just as I give full power. What a stuff up. The windless day plus the rather heavy load in the glider didn’t help things.

So we all decide to go for aero-tows. This is only my third ever tow. The first two don’t count; for the first one I was a front seat pax and for the second it was IMC and I handed control over to the instructor a few seconds into the dust.

I was very impressed how I handled the tow. Fairly straight down the runway and I followed the tug well. At 1500ft, still attached to the tug, the instructor F(3) started some exercises, like pushing the plane wide of the tug, and asking me to correct. We also tried a high tow, just for the experience.

After the 8 minute tow we released at 2300 ft and glided back to the runway. On route he made me practice some tight turns, stalls and an incipient spin. Those and the landing went very well.

On the positive side I learnt some winch launching lessons, like rev it more and feed in the power more gradually. I also had a fantastic aero-tow. On the negative side I felt like a real idiot and I’m going to be real unpopular tomorrow when I dish out a non-duty-showing-up fine. Flight was 27ZAR with a whopping 160ZAR tow.