My Flying

To say that the weather today was bazaar, extremely weird, unreadable and completely screwy would be a huge understatement. Those that know Uitenhage know that it is situated in a valley and even though the airfield is elevated about 150 feet above the town it still never-the-less regularly falls victim to the inversion that often plagues our flying, especially during really hot days. I think the theory is something like the sun heats up the valley and the hot air rises, but because Uitenhage is close to the coast the cold air from the sea blows over the valley and traps in the hot air.

Today there was a very light Northerly blowing and again those that know Uitenhage know that a Northerly usually means hot berg winds, this along with the inversion and a bush fire that filled the valley with smoke really made for poor looking soaring weather. In the sun the temperature was 42ºC and visibility was very poor due to the smoke.

The Twin was only managing short circuits between numerous cable breaks that plagued us today. At about 1pm I decided that I had had enough of watching planes fly and helping to fix broken cables in the heat of the day and I took the Single for a winch launch on 08R (a runway we very seldom use).

About ¾ the way up the launch I flew through a stonking thermal that was strong enough to force me down into my seat and my heart skipped a beat, "Oh Yeah!" I released a few seconds later and made a complete U-turn to track down that lift. I soon found some weak lift and after centralising the thermal started to slowly climb away while the wind started to drift me slowly towards controlled airspace to the south. At about 2000 feet the lift improved significantly and I was bordering rather close to the TMA. At about 3000 feet I decided to head a little north west to give myself some room and was pleasantly surprise to find even a better thermal and climbed to 5500 feet in lift averaging 2.5 m/s in no time.

Once I was up there, there was lift everywhere and a found a lift band that must have been wave of sorts that ran parallel to the Rocklands Road and using it I headed off towards the Lady Slipper mountain maintaining 5000 feet.

Unfortunately for me the guys on the ground were bugging the hell out of me on the radio about them also wanting to fly and also wanting to pack up and go home blah blah. This at 1:30pm in the afternoon!!! About 2/3 the way to the Slipper and at 5000 feet (and easily within range of the Slipper and with sufficient height to get me back) I elected to make a U-turn and let the others fly. I pushed the nose down and flew back at 200 kph which is the fastest that I have ever flown before. I arrived back at 3000 feet and thus only lost 2000 feet which I though pretty impressive while flying into a light head wind.

With all that extra height to spare I practiced side slips, stalls and steep turns over and over until I joined a right-hand circuit for a very nice landing onto 08R. After this I handed over the plane to the next guy. The Twin was already back at the hangar and after a short circuit for the Single, the crew packed up at 2:30pm, just as the sky started to clear to blue and a few huge Cu's developed just to the South of the airfield where I had enjoyed myself. Talk about a waste of good flying weather!!!!! Come on okes!

Never-the-less, the long hot wait was very much worth the 40 minute flight in the Single at a cost of 114.00ZAR.