My Flying

The day did not start off too promising. When I arrived at the airfield the winch was out of action (again) and the Twin, although the damaged from the previous week had been fixed, was still in pieces and needed to be inspected for it's airworthiness certificate.

The sky was blue and it was starting to get hot and the cu's were starting to pop and things were looking very good aloft for gliding and the winch wasn't working and here I was sitting on the ground.

Though not ideal, and without any other real option I fired up the Falke and off I went. I found a good thermal just off the end of the runway just after take off and used it. Chop chop I was at 2500 ft with the engine at like 80% and the lift was getting better and better the higher I climbed. I soon dropped the revs to idle and at 3500 ft I switched off the engine and spent the next hour having some of the best gliding fun that I have ever had, and this in a Falke. The thermals were cooking and I was averaging 3.0 m/s at times. A major pain when thermalling with the Falke is that it has no string or audio vario and one needs to spend too much time in the cockpit, something that it not the safest and also tends to make one a little airsick.

After an hour I decided to head back and set up a long final glide from 4500 ft from just over the mountains to the North of the sandy patches. On the way back I found lots of lift and arrived back at the airfield at 2000 ft. And this is when the fun really began, trying to get down, as all around the airfield there was lift everywhere.

My first attempt to land, dead-stick, was a bit of a, well, mess! I kept extending my downwind and base and the falke was just not going down at any serious rate. I then tried for finals and pulled the brakes (which aren't that hot in the Falke anyway) and pretty soon realised that I just was not going to make it, so I made a U (the first time that I have ever needed to do this) and then tried a proven technique of running up and down perpendicular to the runway on finals to loose height.

That didn't work too well either and at one point I was climbing like at 2.0 m/s. Just to be safe I started the motor as it looked like my next attempt at landing might result in me needing to abort on finals again and perhaps even go around. After quite a bit of meandering a good distance behind the threshold I eventually lost some more height and tried again. Cr@p!!! Still too high, but not as high as the first time and I side slipped the Falke down. I hadn't side slipped in a good while and it was not pretty, especially entering and leaving the side slip. But I got down and stopped about halfway down the runway, which was not as deep as I was expecting to land.

So, in the end it was rather an exciting day with again, more lessons learned - I just hope that I can remember them all and all this at the bargain price of just 238.80ZAR, for just under an hour and half of flying.