My Flying

From the start of the day the gliding weather was never really going to happen, and well, it didn't.

We had a good crew on duty plus two spare hands and most of us worked our tails off.
I had two short 10 minutes flights in the Single doing my damndest to stay aloft and to survive in the weak lift.

I however did have two interesting moments:

Moment #1 : During the first flight I was scrapping for lift over 26 (active runway was 16) at about 900 ft. So this Cessna (who will remain anonymous so as not to name and shame the smuck involved) joins the circuit and I let him know where I am and what I'm doing. So there I am, starting to loose the battle with that graceful hand that tries to keep me away from the hard ground below and at 700 ft, over 26, I decide it's time to abandon all further attempts and to head home.

By this time the Cessna has announced he is downwind for a left hand circuit to 16R. Before I called my runway I spotted the cable retrieval vehicle halfway down 16L (the "glider" runway) and not wishing to play chicken with a beach buggy I transmit my intentions for a downwind to 16R. Silence from the Cessna. So I turn based and transmit. While I'm on finals he transmits base for the same runway. I land and the glider stops nicely in the middle of the runway. Before I disembark I transmit that I'm sitting on the runway, the Cessna now calls finals and I watch as he gets closer with full flaps. Anyways at about 150 ft he powers up and goes around.

Fine you may say, but the oke could have at least let everyone know that he had me visual and thus reduce the stress factor and improve the airmanship factor. Smuck!!!

Moment #2 : During the launch the glider accelerated rapidly as normal, I keep her nice and straight and as the plane starts to fly I gently pull her into the climb. But then, suddenly, I feel the power drop and I push the nose forward to keep the speed up and I’m about 50 feet up. So now what, signal that I'm too slow with runway disappearing quickly, or pull the plug? In a split second, I yank the cable and give about half brakes, next thing here's this parachute next to my nose on the left. I skrik and close the brakes to try and climb above it, which worked. I then settle the plane and land uneventfully ahead. Interesting, but also a nice confidence booster as I did everything right.

What I did find slightly tricky was pushing the nose down and pull brakes to close to the ground as the attitude of the aircraft does change quite dramatically. It took my brain a second or two to compute what had to be done, but after all that I still landed with just under half the runway left.

So, some more really good lessons learnt at 130.70ZAR.