My Flying

Rather a land mark day for me. It’s my first trip to the airfield and solo flying on a week day. Today is a public holiday; one of many this week. Viva!

The clouds looked a little promising, but I started off with some circuits onto 16L for practice. Not my best day and my judgement was a little out resulting in some high approaches. The good news is that my side-slipping was bang on and each of my slide-slips was straight down the runway.

I then found a little lift and thermalled for about 15 minutes with the motor off, basically just sustaining or gaining a little cumulating in a dead stick landing.

Otherwise not much too report, but for the price tag of 177.60ZAR.

It seems that interest has been lost by a number of the members (including students) in flying pure gliders. All that I know is that I have been working may arse off the last two years to get solo into a glider. I have taken on a large number of off airfield responsibilities and I am there every single Sunday for so long as flying takes place. On top of this, each week I try my damndest to fly. This often involves rally the disinterested troops together and fixing things to get things going.

This Sunday I arrived and no one showed the slightest interest in getting the winch out nor the gliders. The Falke’s tailwheel was flat again and two hours of attempts to get it fixed by one of the members came to nought.

So I left, I had fucking had enough. There were public holidays in the coming week and I would make a plan to get the tail wheel fixed and to fly.

I arrived extra early at the airfield during a light drizzle to attend the second edition of the Human Limitations course that is being presented by one of the members.

The turn out members was sad, pathetic and beyond the point of being extremely disappointing. This is a new course that is required to be completed by all new pilots, but one would have expected some of the older hands to at least show some interest.

I found the course material very interesting and the timing for the presentation was almost perfect as it was raining outside. The rain however did clear up and the runways were inspected and found to be useable.

By the time I took off at about 3:30 on 16R the airfield was almost deserted. The wind was a light SE and some nice clouds had formed. What proceeded was the best 45 minutes that I have ever had in the motor Falke.

I practiced everything and my confidence levels got a huge boost. My landings and approaches were spot on and for the first time in the Falke I switched off the motor for my first deadstick landing. There was even some lift around and I soared for about 15 minutes with the motor off scratching and grabbing and gaining almost 700 feet.

For me the highlight of my day was my amazing full airbrake side slipped approach. I started off intentionally high and far out and I managed a full side-slip straight for the runway. I find side-slipping very tricky what with having to cross the controls and the strange feeling one has when the plane is flying side ways. Even trickier is controlling ones direction, for example if you are slipping to the left (left aerolon and right rudder) and you drift off centre to the left, you either need to give less left aerlon or more right rudder. Nogal confusing for the brain.

Anyways a great day’s flying at 169.00ZAR.