My Flying

The weather did not look promising for the day with a light wind and a very blue sky.
I took a winch launch from 08 into the South Easterly after having observed some of the other planes successfully staying aloft for more than a circuit.

About 3/4 the way through the launch I felt and heard the thermal I flew through and it felt good. After the launch I made a u-turn and quickly found some lift. I spent the next hour and a half playing in the thermals and picking up lots of experience.

I think I pretty much have my thermalling speed control under (well) control and I can keep the needle around the 80 mark without really concentrating. That with the working audio for the vario means that I can spend much more time outside the cockpit.

I was also playing with my new PDA and SoarPilot gliding software. Works very nicely thank-you. The only problem is that pressing buttons and flying don't work so well together. I however need to get used to the software and PDA as I will be using it for some cross country flying in the future.

The circuit went off well enough and so was the landing onto 16R.

Unfortunately for me the ground crew were either fast asleep or didn't give a crap, as I had to man handle the aircraft off the runway solo. I then sat patiently waiting while the Twin landed, was retrieved, was launched, landed again and was retrieved. So after eventually realising that I was not going to get any assistance, I walked back to 08 and fetched my bakkie with the tow-out gear. Drove back to the glider, hooked up everything and put the plane back in the hangar. Fortunately for me, I had long since fixed and made new tow out gear and it all went smoothly for a one man operation. So that's 206.50ZAR for 90 minutes and a launch.