My Flying

The day started off early with a nice lecture on Human Limitations and I found the 'class room' environment and formal reading material very informative. This type of instruction is unfortunately very rare in our training and more, much more, is really needed.

As the Twin was not yet serviceable only the Falke and Single could be flown. I took the third (and last) winch launch in the Single. The launch went off well enough even though I was rather nervous as the winch driver gave the first two pilots very fast launches.

I headed straight for the ridge because the SE was blowing. My launch height was not good and I reached the launch at my abort-and-return altitude. Fortunately just as I arrived I found some stong lift. I spent just over a half an hour playing on the ridge and having lots of fun. It was very hard work as there were only a few bubbles of very strong lift. However just a strong as the lift was, there were many areas of bad sink so I spent quite some time discovering and mapping these areas.

After a half hour I decided to head in to land as I imagined that the others also wanted a turn to fly. On landing I discovered that this was not the case so I unfortunately lost out on some good ridge time. I was determined to make a high approach landing and not to come in scrapping over any fence like last time. Thus I landed deeper than normal, but not more than a 1/3 down the runway. I was only really not happy with my flare, which was again too high (1/2 brakes) so I needed to let the plane float along and sink a little by not holding the nose too high. Cost = 96.05ZAR.