My Flying

I spent most of today, Saturday, working in the hangar at the airfield busy fixing and modifying the tail-dolly for the Single Astir. This is the fourth Saturday I have spent on this job and I'm almost done now.

Firstly, I stripped down the old and broken glass from the dolly, removed the hinges and latches and sanded it down to remove the old paint. Then I layered several new pieces of glass to repair the damaged areas and plugged the old bolt holes. The wheel assembly was also removed and a complete new bracket was made up (thanks to my father) that now has a much greater trailing angle than the old one.

Today I removed the old foam and glued in new foam. Then we replaced the hinges and latches so that everything fitted nice and snug and ensured that the wheel assembly sat nice and square relative to the ground. This may sound like a quick job, but it's not! The dolly was put in place and strapped up so many times that I can now do it blind folded and in my sleep.

What now remains is to paint everything and get it looking nice and lekker. This is planned for this coming Saturday.

After all this labour I took the Falke (for which I now have a license!!!! have I mentioned this) for a quick spin (a few circuits) at about 4:30pm. I was using 16 and the sun was low and almost directly behind me which made for some amazingly pretty approaches as I could watch as my shadow converged with me during the final few metres of the approach and flare. 92.20ZAR

The started off looking promising, but this soon turned to disappointment and frustration when we realised that the winch was kaput. No amount of tinkering by any of the members managed to get it running.

I took the Falke for a spin, first one circuit to 08 then another, no wait, what's this, some bumps, mmmhhhh. I explored the bumps with the engine on idle and managed to climb to 2000 ft. The lift was very broken but good enough in places to actually use.

So the day ended with a 38 minute flight in the Falke of which about 25 minutes was soaring, 182.00ZAR.

The turn out at the airfield today was rather small, this plus the fact that we had no winch driver meant that we could only fly the Falke.

Just to get some practice in, I performed two short circuits on runway 34. The wind was a light Northerly but once airborne I realised just how bumpy it was, and not bumpy in a good way. After being tossed about for two circuits I decided to call it quits.

Short bumpy day at 102.00ZAR

Now here’s what I really enjoyed about today.

I arrived at the airfield and for once there were enough people to get the operations going without my assistance. After I had given them some direction, they managed to get everything ready and had towed the Twin to the launch point.

I had borrowed another member's tow out gear and in relative peace and quiet I prepared the Single, hooked in up to my bakkie and towed it out to the launch point. All at my own pace and all (well mostly) without the hassle of making sure the duty crew got things ready instead of standing around in little groups chatting.

The weather looked very unpromising, but when I noticed that the motor glider was sustaining just next the airfield, it looked like things were going to get better. I timed my launch just right, found some lift and I was gone for the next hour. Of course still too chicken to drift away from the safety of the airfield.

The movie: Watch a short 2 min video.

During my flight I climbed to 4000 ft, which was probably about 500 ft short of cloud base, lost the height and started all over again. Tons of fun, spoilt only by a huge back pain, as I wasn't sitting correctly on the parachute. Cost, a bargain at 160.25ZAR.