My Flying

I completed another small personnel aviation milestone today. I flew a dual cross country flight in the Motor Falke which consisted of three legs, a landing at another airfield and also a short venture into controlled airspace. It took 2.5 hours to complete the 220 km route flying into a headwind on two of the three legs >.

We took off from FAUH and climbed slowly to 5000 feet routing direct for Kareedouw (true bearing 259º) 103km away. Our IAS averaged 105 kph while the ground speed averaged about 80 kph. This took us 75 minutes.

At 5000 feet and with a clear blue day Kareedouw was easy enough to find. However once we had left the familiar mountains around Uitenhage and the roads and rivers became fewer and fewer I can quite easily understand how easy it is to get lost.

We then routed down the Langkloof Valley for Paradise Beach 58 km away on a true bearing of 107º. I pushed the nose down to loose the extra altitude so that we would arrive at 2000 ft. The average speed for this part of the journey was 140 kph for IAS and ground speed and this took us 25 minutes including the circuit and touchdown.

We joined on a left-hand circuit for runway 08 and I planned the circuit well enough but was still too high on finals and needed to doing some side slipping with full brakes to loose the extra altitude. The flare and touchdown was an absolute beaut. First I felt the tailwheel touch down lightly and never felt the main wheel touch. For a moment I wondered whether I was actually on the ground or simply floating just above it.

We hung around for a short while chatting the the Whisper factory guys and then headed out for FAUH routing behind Jeffreys Bay and then following the coast to Gamtoos River staying at 2000 ft. At Gamtoos I made my first ever contact with Approach and all went off without a hitch. At Van Standens we routed inland aiming for the eastern point of The Lady's Slipper.

We landed at Uitenhage on 08L at without any problems. This leg took us 45 minutes with an average airspeed of about 130 kph and a ground speed of 105 kph.

View the photos here!

All in all a very enjoyable flight with lots of time to admire the scenery and to take plenty of photographs. I am too scared to calculate the cost but I'm guessing it will be about 660ZAR.