My Flying

Today was going to turn out to be another bad gliding day, but not just for me, but for gliding everywhere. After a day like today one can not help but to reflect on gliding, and aviation in general, and to think: "Yes this is great, being able to fly and defy gravity and all that, but at what cost?"

In my short time in gliding, which is now just over three years and also considering that it's mainly only a weekend activity, I have witnessed one accident during a winch launch in which the guy upfront broke his leg and the glider was badly damaged as well as observing the devastating after effects of what happens when a motor-glider flies into the side of a mountain and also helping to carry the deceased off that same mountain.

Today was unfortunately going to be event number three in my experience book of how not to meet the ground. On day one I mentioned that I had witnessed two really scary takeoffs. The first was when a glider, during the tow, climbed way too high behind the tug while the tug was still low over the ground. The risk here is that the tug can run out of elevator authority and either not be able to climb or have its nose pulled into the runway. Both of these situations are of course not good and normally the tug pilot pulls the plug on the glider. These two both got away with it today, but it was close.

Still on day one, and about six takeoffs later, a very short while after both aircraft where just airborne during an aero-tow, the glider started getting badly out of position and starting getting into some weird type of oscillation. It was very scary to watch but some how the glider pilot managed to get things back under control and all went off well from there forward. This is what is know as PIO (Pilot Induced Oscillation) and is particularly prevalent in gliders as they have long wings that flex under load.

I’m no technical expert, but basically what happens is that as the plane gets out of position the pilot makes a correction which may be too sudden or he may give too much control input, the plane then changes position but often too much in that direction, he then tries to get the plane back inline and the control inputs become more and more bigger and sudden. Furthermore, as a glider has long wings, and some gliders wings are more flexible than others, the wings start to bend and sometimes in opposite directions to which the fuselage is moving. For example, the pilot pushes the stick forward, the fuselage moves down and then the wings start to bend up a little later, he then pulls back on the stick and the fuselage starts moving up but the wings are still bending up and so it goes on and the oscillation tends to go from bad to worse in a few seconds.

Today I was again near the back of the grid and the weather was looking a whole lot better than the two preceding days. Just over half the field was airborne and I was casually watching a launch while the other guys were busy getting their planes ready.

As I mentioned early, I have previously witnessed a glider crash on take off and it's a really horrible helpless feeling that one experiences. Things start off looking okay, but then picture of how things should normally look starts to change, slowly, but then rapidly as you start to realise that shit is on the way. You also watch helplessly as the slow motion chain of events completes itself with a horrible thud, dust everywhere and then silence.

I again needed to go though this as a lady from Britain, flying for the first time in Bloemfontein, lost control of her Discus due to serious PIO. She elected to pull the plug and to try land ahead, but she couldn't control the decent and the right wing of the glider caught the ground and spun the plane through about 180º breaking off the empennage just behind the engine. Nobody else at the launch site witnessed the crash and all that I could think of was shouting to get people's attention. Fortunately two of the pilots there (and still on the ground) were doctors and they raced off to try and help. Even more fortunately the lady involved was fine, it was however decided to call the paramedics to extract her from the plane just in case she had hurt her neck or back.

The newspapers managed to get hold of the story and there it was, the next morning in the local newspaper, a broken glider splattered all over the front page. Not a nice thing to see; not to mention the unneeded bad press for general aviation.

As far as the organisers are concerned (i.e. Soaring Safaris), I was more than a little disappointed. Once the ambulance had left, which was about and hour after the crash, no one came to the launch point to inform us of what would happen next. Even once the damaged plane had been removed the weather was still looking good and still nothing. We just sat in the sun chatting about the events of the day. What I found even more disappointing was that the next day during the briefing the accident was not mentioned at all. I would have expected at least a statement to the effect that the pilot was alright, that the plane was packed away in its box and that we could rest assured that all their contingency and safety procedures, in place for just an event, had worked well and as planned, but nothing, nanna, zip!

If you think that after that accident, my excitement for the day was over then you would be wrong. As it turned out the weather started to over develop and a few very black and nasty looking clouds started to develop. One of these clouds started moving slowly towards the airfield and by the time it started to get dark most the pilots had gone to seek shelter. I then heard on the radio that a glider was returning. The sky was now looking very dark and the wind was beginning to pick up and here this plane is on finals for 27.

He landed pretty deep on a really badly maintained runway and I saw nobody come to help him, most notably none of the organiser's crew. As he was stranded in the middle of the runway with no help on the way I climbed into my bakkie and went to go help him drag his aeroplane half off the runway into the veld. I then gave him a lift back to fetch his bakkie and tow out gear and returned to the glider. This whole process could not have taken more than 10 minutes, but as we arrived back at the glider the heavens opened up. I don't think that I have ever been drenched in rain water as quickly as today. From being warm and dry to wet and soaked in mere seconds. All this while we pulled the glider out the bush, put on the wing dolly and hooked her up to the back of the van. This all took five very long wet minutes. One part that had we really worried, and perhaps in retrospect it was not that intelligent of me, but we were doing all this with a few lighting bolts flashing about. Anways, all turned out alright and within 15 minutes the rain had stopped. Exciting stuff!

The last interesting event of the day was the dust storm that arrived a few hours after the thunderstorm. Weird stuff that I have never witnessed before. The horizon turned a light orange colour and started moving closer. You could actually visually see how the dust front moved in and in our direction. When it did arrive it was not as serious as it looked. The wind blew, but was not particularly strong and though there was dust in the air it was more like a mist than sand.

So to summarise day four: Scary crash, lightning and rain storm, dust storm... What a day and preferably one that I would not like to be repeated. I suppose we need to accept that these kinds of things will happen, learn from them, appreciate that all involved did their best considering the circumstances and in this case be thankful that no one was hurt.

Bloemfontein Camp - Day 4

What to say about today? Ponder, ponder, think, think, mmmmhh? Ok, I need to make a small confession: I'm actually writing this blog a few weeks later and I actually can't remember much about what happened on this day. Very weird as day 4 seems to have just merged into the rest of the week and has become, well, slightly forgotten.

To help me to unravel these forgotten events I have needed to rely mainly on my logger's trace as well as the few photos that I took. So, after carefully reconstructing the events of day 4, this is what happened:

The morning started off looking much the same as the previous day being mostly overcast, but with a few blue gaps in the clouds. The weather prediction was also very much the same as the previous day, i.e. not good (remember the moist air from Mozambique?). However, today the grid was full. I think that the success of the three pilots in yesterday's mediocre weather and the fact that most had had a rest day, was encouragement to give today a bash.

We launched from 36 and pretty soon I found some lift, though it did take me a little longer than normal. Today I basically flew to the dam and back as I was not confident with the lift. The high cloud remained there for most of the day (as can be seen in the photo), though it did disappear towards the late afternoon and a few cumulous clouds did develop during the course of day. I managed to get as high as 10300 feet AMSL and spent most my time (2.5 hours) between 8500 and 9500 feet.

When I studied the logger's trace for the flight I can see that either my thermalling technique today was not great or the lift was weak as my average climb was 0.6 m/s and I spent lots of time thermalling and either not getting anywhere or going down. Never-the-less the flight was enjoyable and I uneventfully landed on 36.

Now that I think about it, I also need to mention my take off. On day one I mentioned that I had witnessed some hairy take offs and today, was unfortunately my turn. Though not as hairy as some of those that I witnessed, I was sure kept very busy and was definitely wide awake by the time I reached the end of the runway.

I was caught by complete surprise and did learn a valuable lesson. Today the wind was blowing VERY light from the west, but we still used 36 so in other words the wind was almost 90º cross from the left. The ground run went off fine and I lifted off nicely behind the tug and stayed low. Then something weird happened (a good number of seconds after this photo below was taken), the tug suddenly started to crab seriously to the left and I though to myself, HUH? And then less than I second later my left wing suddenly lifted and pushed me out of position to the right and high. I fought briefly to get the plane back behind the tug and then proceeded crab into the cross wind and followed the tug's example.

So what happened? It's pretty simple really and I figured it out later when back on terra firma. Along the left side of the runway is a tall long row of pine trees. During the ground run and the first bit while getting airborne the trees shielded me from the cross wind. However, the moment we passed the trees the cross wind caught us. The tug driver was prepared and crabbed immediately, I was however a little asleep, but figured things out quick enough. In retrospect it may have been nice for the tug driver to warn me, but hey I should also have been more prepared.

The cost of this whole exercise was 630.10ZAR including 360.00ZAR for the tow.

Bloemfontein Camp - Day 3

This morning the sky did not look so great, in fact, it looked pretty shitty as it was mostly overcast with high mucky looking light grey cloud. At the briefing we were informed that this was due to huge amounts of moist air moving in from Mozambique and that poor thermals, if any, were predicted for the day. To make things even worse, it was predicted that this moist air might spoil the rest of the gliding weather for the week.

Nobody at the briefing looked particularly eager to tackle this poor weather and I think that this was due to it being a serious anti-climax after yesterday's awesome weather, and also perhaps that the people needed a rest. Most of the pilots, including myself, opted not to fly. Three however did decide to fly and as we found out the following morning, they actually did pretty well. Oh well, that's what you get for following the herd.

The break was actually rather good as it gave me a chance to rest and to spend some time with the family. We visited the Bloemfontein Zoo and I was very impressed; if you ignore the obvious moral aspects of keeping wild animals in captivity. The Zoo is very well maintained, the animals looked well cared for and there is much to see and do there.

Here's hoping for better weather tomorrow!

On day one (Sunday) I mentioned that I was late to arrive at the launch point as I needed to rig my glider and that I held up a launch. I also mentioned that during the morning briefings there is a section on House Keeping which is essentially a "nice" "uit kak" (for my non-Afrikaans speaking readers: "uit kak" is basically a rather pointed method of shitting someone out for doing something wrong).

So anyways, during Monday morning's meeting I needed to hear how people must not hold up the launch by driving down the runway and how they must be ready for when the tug comes to collect them. This "uit kak" is not directed at anyone specific, though I am sure that everyone knows, as it was normally rather obvious whom the guilty party was. My problem with this method is that no one comes to speak to you privately to explain the problem and also to hear your side of the story; it is rather brought out in a more public manner. Later on during the week I was speaking to one of the other pilots (from Britain) and he was also pretty upset as he was also subjected to what he thought an unfair "uit kak".

Never-the-less, so we learn and I didn't allow this to upset me or to distract me from the all important task of flying.

As a bonus for the day, I helped to rig a brand new all shiny JS1. This was the first official production model with the serial number of 003 and may I say, what an amazing looking aircraft.

Bloemfontein Camp - Day 2

You need to understand that I have never ever been solo (by myself / alone !) further than gliding distance from any airfield (in a glider). For those that fly cross country all they time they might have forgotten just how big a step this is - leaving the nest and the safety of familiar surroundings. You need to place a huge amount of faith in your own skills and also hope like crazy that the weather plays along too.

Where I normally fly from, cross country flying is not really an option unless you are either very brave or highly skilled. Outlanding possibilities are very few and far between and most will result in some form of damage to the aeroplane, which in my opinion is not justifiable risk, well with my skill level anyway.

So this was one of the main reasons for me trekking to Bloemfontein, the chance to leave the nest and the safety of the airfield and head away, far away. Also, as part of the process of obtaining one's Glider Pilot License (GPL) one needs to fly a short (50 km) cross country course. The course need only be 50 km one way, but flying back sure makes life easier.

Yesterday the weather was not great at all, but today the Cu's were starting to pop all over the place. By the time I took off, from near the back of the grid, the sky was looking awesome. So what was my plan? Well for starters I was going to try my hand at flying to the dam (the Krugersdrift Dam is about 22 km from the airfield) and then to re-assess the situation there.

As it turns out, my first journey away from the airfield and to the dam went off pretty well. Cloud base was a respectable 10000 to 11000 feet but jumping from cloud to cloud worked out very well and I lost little height in the process. When I arrived at the dam the weather towards Dealesville (55 km from New Tempe) looked really good. What the heck, I got this far ok, so let's try for the whole 9 yards! And off I went.

About halfway to Dealesville I found an awesome cloud streak and was able to push up the speed with out loosing much height. By the time I reached Dealesville I wanted more, much more, and headed about 10 km further north to a saltpan before turning back for the dam. The average thermals for the day were about 2.5 to 3.0 m/s, which though not the 5 m/s thermals I was hoping for, were plenty in quantity and more than strong enough to help me to move around the sky.

Yesterday I mentioned that I was experiencing some bad breathing problems due to the higher altitude to which I was not accustomed and also perhaps due to the physically exhaustion I experienced on the ground with the heat and high humidity when I rigged the glider. I never took my oxygen bottle along on that flight as cloud base was predicted to be about 9000 feet (which it was) and generally most people only require oxygen from about 12000 feet. However, today I was fine all the way up to 11 000 feet, but decided to use the oxygen for about a ½ and hour just to boost my system. I think my body just needed a day to acclimatise to the higher altitude and thinner air.

Halfway back from the dam to New Tempe some of the clouds to the W and SW started to look really dark and menacing, but I wasn't interesting in landing just yet so I pottered around the sky just playing with the lift that I found. Well that was until I saw the first lightning bolt about 20 km away. Mmmhhh, now what? Which way was the storm moving and how fast? After about 20 minutes of just watching and waiting I cranked up the speed and flew through some very light rain to land on 36 for one of my best landings yet.

So, what an amazing day! A cross country flight of about 130 km, out and return, with some pretty good weather, finished off with a thunderstorm and a great landing, all that at The cost, 681.90ZAR including 360.00ZAR for the tow.