My Flying

After last week's self imposed flying embargo I was very eager to get into the air again. The weather forecast for today didn't look good as very strong winds were predicted from the afternoon onwards.

I arrived early at the airfield and the winch driver was already there, so things were looking good. However, it didn't last that way. The rest of the crew had very little interest in getting things moving and as there were no students for the Twin they "made" the decision not to organise things and to get the winch going. After a little grumbling and getting things organised, I eventually managed to persuade the crew "help me out", but by then it was already late and the wind was beginning to pick up.

My first launch was at 12:00pm and I managed to stay aloft for about 7 minutes in some weak lift after a really cr@ppy winch launch where I only managed 800 ft into a moderate head wind. The launch was way to fast in the beginning and only after lots and lots of signalling did it slow down, this of course wasted valuable climbing time.

By then a student has arrived and the Twin was taken to the launch point for a few short flights. The wind was starting to pick up and was blowing at 25 kph and gusting 50 kph and it was decided to abandon flying. I elected to take a final winch launch for Single's hangar flight.

Unfortunately the launch was even worse than before in that this time it was too slow and after not gaining much height and an airspeed of about 75kph I decided rather to pull the plug and to land ahead. Later, I was queried on my decision and told that I should have stuck it out and pulled. I still however feel that my call was good, though marginal. Why stick it out in a cr@p launch that MAY get better? Why not land ahead and start again? Besides the safety aspect of pulling the ply early and giving yourself more time to land ahead, I am also paying for the launch and I want a decent one.

Later I did realise that the launch would probably have got better and that due to the strong wind it would have improved significantly once I was out of ground effect; but I will leave that experiment for another day.

So all in all a disappointing day. The weather and lift (reported back by the motor-gliders) was rather good in the morning, but the crew resulted in things starting off too late. My first flight was good and the landing a beaut, but the second never really got off the ground, literally. Cost = 52.95ZAR.