My Flying

A bit of an on-off day for me today and the weather was extra peculiar and pretty much inline with the weather forecast.

The day started off with a light south-westerly wind on the ground and therefore runway 26 was used. As the day progress the south-westerly increased slowly but at 12 pm it was still less than 5 kph. It was however what was happening higher up that made things more interesting. From about 12:30 pm the wind from about 500 feet up started to BLOW (I would guess at least 40 kph) and from a more southerly direction. This made for some very nasty wind gradient as the wind down low was still relatively light at about 10 kph. Towards 2 pm the wind speed on the ground started increasing rapidly to 30 kph gusting 40 kph.

So what about the flying?

At about eleven, and after only short circuit flights in the Twin, a member took the Single up and managed to stay up. After about 20 minutes of watching this me and another member jumped into the Twin with me up front (and flying) to join in and to try our luck.

And boy, can I say that I worked my @rse off for the next 20 minutes. The lift was extremely broken so one didn't actually thermal, but kind of flew in circles trying to find as many bumps as possible. It took me about 10 minutes to climb to 2500 feet, but we were being pushed by the wind into controlled airspace so I headed out looking for better lift up wind and found diddley squat. So it was a circuit for a very nice landing.

I was rather chuffed with myself as I managed (for 20 minutes) to do well in a plane that is heavier and a lot less manoeuvrable than the Single.

After this my day went downhill. A took the Single up at 1 pm to find bugger all lift and a very very nasty wind up there. Once again I was taken by surprise as to just how badly the Single penetrates into wind and thus I miss judged the circuit a bit, but still made the fence with a good 400 feet to spare. Opened the brakes full as I normally do (wind or no wind) and started heading down at about 140 kph (i.e. lots of extra speed for the wind gradient), never-the-less I still got a big fright when at about 100 feet the speed dropped VERY suddenly and it felt like the bottom fell out of the plane. I instinctively closed the brakes and tried to regain my composure before opening them again and landing after a small balloon. Not my best

Later that day we decided to pack up because the wind was getting to be a problem, 30 kph gusting 40 kph. I got permission for a hangar flight in the Single and was determined to regain some confidence after the previous landing. Got my best winch launch ever into the strong wind and managed 1600 feet. Flew into wind to burn off some height and watched the ground to see just how slow my ground speed was. Real Slow!

Again I got caught out a little with the circuit as the base leg seemed to have a headwind component when I was expecting more of a tailwind. Never-the-less, I pushed the nose down and made the fence with a good 300 feet, opened the brakes to half (normally I go full, but was worried about wind gradient) and got ready to land. Of course, it wasn't going to be that easy. There was some very nasty turbulence close to the ground, in fact, the worst that I have ever experience and with ½ brakes and 150 kph on the clock a strong gust suddenly lifted me up and a bit to the side. Now I was rattled all over again, lined up and flared, but I was carrying too much speed and perhaps a bit hasty and I bounced nice and high. Closed the brakes and tried again for another small bounce then the softest landing yet. Again I was a bit disappointed with my performance. Oh well, some good lessons learnt and I should get plenty of practice with wind before the end of the year. Cost 186.80ZAR.