My Flying

I arrived early at the airfield (as usual), but this time with a mission. I hadn't flown the Falke in a good while and I wanted to get some practice in. I was warned before hand that the tail wheel had a puncture so I came prepared with all the right kit.

Good thermalling weather had been predicted for that later part of the morning and the sky look promising. What followed was two hours of extreme frustration! >

The rear tyre had actually been slightly damaged and this had caused multiple punctures. It took me almost two hours to find and fix these nine holes, only to find out that the tyre had been so badly damaged that it no longer wanted to stay on its rim under pressure.

Our club, being the well oiled machine that it is, had no spare. One of the instructors on duty suggested that we use the Twin's wheel, as it was basically the same size. This I did and off I went. The thermals were dying down but I managed to stay aloft for a good 50 minutes and thermalled from 1000 feet up to about 3000 feet.

I learnt a lot about thermalling the Falke that day and especially how you can ride the stall when thermalling at low speed. At about 65 km/h IAS the inside wing makes a distinctive vibrating sound, but it does not drop. Two or three times while doing this a gust would tip the plane over a little and I just gave opposite rudder and some stick down to b safe. Flying costs for the day, 185.40ZAR.

Day started off dark and misty with a little rain. The weather forecast predicted morning rain with strong afternoon winds.

So to save a trip I decided to stay at home. Heard later that there are people at the airfield but now I'm committed to other family responsibilities. So I'm grounded again.

Day looked dark and a little misty, but headed out the airfield anyway. Few people arrived and about 2 hours later we all headed for home.

The wind was blowing from early that morning. At the airfield the wind was cross for all the runways and gusting to about 30 kph. It was decided that as the tug (Lambada) doesn't enjoy cross wind landings, that we would not aerotow.

The instructor took a pupil for a long two soar in the Falke and by the time he returned the wind had picked up to such an extent that I did not feel comfortable in flying the Falke solo. So that was the end of my day.

I spent some time exploring the single Astir in preparation for my next flight, hopefully the next weekend.