My Flying

The winch in still out of order and even though we had a tug driver today, the keys to the tug were out of town.

The weather in the morning looked promising and the reports back from the Falke pilots was good. Unfortunately when my turn arrived, so did a cold Westerly and the lift became broken and weak.

Never-the-less I scrapped and chugged along, sometimes with power, but mostly just above idle making use of the lift that I could find. I ventured far from the airfield (well far for me) and was pleasantly surprised in that I could judge the 12 km final glide back to the airfield and still have enough height (though just) to make my final turns.

Some nice well planned touch and goes and after 60 minutes I was home. Although the weather was a bit disappointing I learnt quite a bit and built up my confidence levels. (Cost = 288,00ZAR)

Today was week four (4) without a winch!!! This surely can't go on . I spent the morning with a friend trying to get things going, but still nothing. To make maters worse, much worse, the gliding weather looked really good. This is hugely depressing and frustrating!!!!!

Though the winch is STILL out of order (week 3) we were fortunate to have a tug driver at the airfield today. The weather was also very unusual with a slight South-Westerly and banks of high level wave like clouds slowing rolling in through the day.

I took a bumpy 8 minute aero-tow to 4000ft to the West of the airfield and searched desperately for some lift. There were lots of nice bumps and a few areas of zero sink, but all in all I only managed to stay airborne for 31 minutes.

My circuit planning and landing were absolutely beautiful and I was thoroughly chuffed with myself.

I am slowly starting to get to grips with this aeroplane and things have now been a lot better since I have fixed the audio for the electronic vario and now can spend less time in the cockpit. My speed control is also getting very good, but I still need to learn to be easier on the rudder as the rudder is so light that I tend to skid a little through the turns.

The winch was still unfortunately kaput and so we could fly gliders, even though there was a good turnout of members.

I took the Falke for a 50 minute spin. Talk about a frustrating flight. There were quite a few bumps that teased one into believing that there was lift, but they were weak and very broken. I spent lots of time trying to use them, but with the Falke's motor ticking over at 1500 rpm just to sustain altitude. A few times I gained a few hundred feet, but eventually headed for home.