My Flying

Thursday was a public holiday and a few of us got together, a few weeks back, to arrange a flying weekend (away camp) at the nearby Karoo town of Graaff-Reinet which is about 250km by road. It was a little early in the season so the weather would be a big gamble as to if it would be soarable or not.

I spent two Saturdays, in previous weeks, sorting out a few small things on the ASW20 and come Thursday morning the plane was nicely boxed up in her trailer and we were ready to hit the road. We left early 7:30am Thursday morning for the +- 3 hour drive there and after arriving we all helped each in rigging the four gliders. A very long 3 hours later we were ready to fly. None of us had previously flown out of GR and sadly the organisation as to runways to use, radio frequencies, radio calls, where to fly (and not) and contingency plans was pretty much neglected and left mainly up to the individual pilots.

Day1 - Thursday

GR has a nice long (1.5km) tar runway that is 30m wide and points 02/20 with a shorter (about 800m) cross gravel runway, 33/15 and airfield elevation is 2550 feet. There are some lowish runways lights spaced about 40m apart on the tar runway that need to be considered when rolling the glider off the runway after landing. The windsocks are darn difficult to see from the ground and impossible to see when sitting in a glider on 02. They are also darn tricky to spot from the air unless you know exactly where to look. Runway 33 is surrounded by some high bush (say 2m or so) and this creates some serious wind gradient when landing (I found out about this the hard way).

My first aero-tow was from 02 with a complete 90° cross wind blowing lightly at about 5-10 kph. This was the second launch of the day after the previous glider not finding any lift and slowly gliding back home. For my first launch at GR I sat behind the tug and though the wind was cross, I had no idea what lay beyond the far threshold of the runway and I couldn't see the windsock I was surprising relaxed. This, I thought about later, was a seriously shitty attitude and may have also helped with the fact that I missed one of my pre-take off checks. Thankfully for an ASW20, it wasn't serious. One bit of information I did know it that one of the other pilots had inspected the cross runway, which was in a good condition, and I at least knew I could land there.

The cross wind aero tow went of beautifully and I just manged to keep her from dropping back onto the deck when she popped up and immediately crabbed straight into the cross wind (all by herself). The tow was uneventful until right near the top of my tow where I must have lost concentration and got badly out of position, and elected to release. I then radioed my release to the tug and for some reason the pilot didn't hear the call and, so I later heard, continued climbing for another 1000 feet or so.

I found a weak bump and started to work it, but I was slowly drifting downwind of the airfield (GPS said 40kph wind at about 4500 MSL). Never-the-less I managed to gain about 500 ft or so before I headed back up wind and over the dam. I have got to say that though the dam is not that big it's the biggest body of water that I have ever flown over and it felt really nice. Anyway, over the dam I picked up a very weak and broken thermal and started to work it. After 2 turns or so someone from the ground started calling me on the radio asking all kinds of questions. After trying fruitlessly to understand the call (twice) I briefly radio for them to shut-up (nicely) but by then it was too late. I had lost the thermal, was getting low and needed to land. NEXT TIME I TURN THE VOLUME DOWN!

The circuit planning went off okay for runway 33 (the gravel one), though I did turn finals a little late and low and due to the headwind only came in with like 1/3 brakes. About 5 metres up I got a huge scare as suddenly I was dropped and I shut the brakes immediately also pushing the nose down (later I figured out that this was due to the wind gradient caused by the bush shielding the runway from the wind). So now I was low and had no brakes and needed to float down the runway very slowly and carefully opening the brakes to about 1/3.

In the end this flight (including tow) ended up being 25 minutes and afterwards I had plenty to think about.