My Flying

For today the weather forecast predicted a light-ish northerly wind and a dead sky as far as thermals go and they were bang on. However, as we have had four weekends in a row without flying gliders most the members were desperate to get airborne and so the gliders were hauled out to runway 34.

I started my day with a short flight in the Motor Falke and practiced two circuits including a nice cross wind landing with a light breeze that went off very well.

I am starting to get into this backseat flying thing in the Twin and it's actually rather fun. I took a winch launch (my third ever) with an instructor into about a 25kph wind and all went off very well. During the landing I noticed, too late, that I was actually well off the centre line to the right, but I managed to avoid the bushes and it was only during my next landing that I figured out why.

When sitting at the back you have no direct view ahead as the person in front of you has their head blocking the way and as I was flying a right-hand circuit I needed to look down the right side between his head and the canopy's frame and as it turns out I tended to aim were I was looking, i.e. a little to the right. After having realising this during my second circuit I landed nicely in the middle of the runway.

A little later I took a winch launch in the Single for a little practice and ended up flying a very short circuit due to the shitty launch height of about 850 feet.

Later in the day the wind switched to more westerly and we changed runways to 26. One of the members had found some nice wave lift a few kilometres from the airfield when flying the Falke and he insisted that I give it a go in a glider. The tug and roped were hauled out and I took my first backseat aerotow (which was a breeze by the way) to try and find the lift. Unfortunately for me I released too early and missed/couldn't find the lift so it was a slow float back to the airfield for a nice hangar landing.

All-in-all quite a successful day at the airfield today: A short flight in the Falke with a nice cross-wind landing. Two backseat winch launches in the Twin, a winch launch in the Single for practice and a backseat aerotow in the Twin. Unfortunately no soaring but lots of gliding and practice at a cost of 267.55ZAR plus an aerotow.

A very real problem at some of the airfields in Africa, even the ones officially licensed by the CAA are pedestrians and other domestic animals that graze there. Today we twice needed to herd cattle off the runways. The fences are constantly being repaired but the locals feel nothing about steeling the wire, breaking down the fence poles and letting their animals run loose. Dangerous and a sad state of affairs.