My Flying

Let's face it - globally, well at least in my small neck of the woods; the weather is all wrong and a bit of a mess. Summer seems to think that it's winter, Autumn thinks that it's Summer and Spring, well poor Spring has just been forgotten altogether. The weather for the previous several months has just been totally weird. I am not sure if this is due to global warming, or perhaps even global cooling as some experts are calling it these days as apparently we are actually heading towards another ice age within the next few thousand years, but summer has still not reached us. Granted, since November we have had a few really hot days and even less really hot nights, but statistically our hottest months are December and January, and these have well, as you know, passed.

So what of today's weather? Well, inline with the unusual trend as alluded to above, it was a complete mess and a bit of a lottery. It started off overcast, with almost no wind and the odd, ever so light just to tease us, drops of rain and started to change from about 12pm into what looked to be like a nice gliding day and at about 3pm the wind started to howl.

We members used this time to do some chores around the hangar and clubhouse and to work further on the winch, which is still unfortunately out of action. Once all this was done the members starting heading on home. I, however, decided to hang around and wait for the predicted southwesterly to arrive as I wanted to try soar the ridge with the Falke. In the mean time there were a good number of cu's developing over the mountains so I decided to kick-start the Limbach 2000 and head for the hills, so to speak.

Just after take-off I found a nice thermal and climbed quickly to 2000 ft with the engine spinning at 90%, but once I had left that thermal it was nothing but flat and smooth sailing, even after heading for the mountains where the clouds were looking good. After trying for 45 minutes to find some lift and climbing slowly with the engine to 4500 ft I head for the ridge. I arrived there at 900 feet and after four trips up and down with a few small bumps I was down to 500 feet and head for 16R to land. The circuit and landing went off very well and I was back after spending a rather pointless 306.00ZAR.