My Flying

No flying today.

METAR (Actual)
FAPE 111230Z 25030G43KT 9999 SCT039 23/10 Q1009 NOSIG=

FC TAF - 6/9 hours
FAPE 111200Z 111324 27035G45KT 9999 SCT025 TEMPO 2124 4000 SHRA BKN010 TX21/13ZTN16/24Z=

Today was my first full day of winch duty. I was pre-warned that this would be a very boring and lonely duty as one sat alone at the opposite end of the airfield with your only visitor being the guy who would come retrieve the cable after each launch.

I packed in a good book, some sandwiches, water and my trusty Canon and was ready for the day. The winch launching went well and I received two compliments. After eight launches it was about 2pm and I was called for my flight of the day.

As things turned out the weather had improved greatly by then; the previous longest flight was 15 minutes and I was up for 46 minutes, only to return on command from the instructor F(5) as others still wanted to fly.

The instructor complimented me on my good launch which was very nice, especially considering the 50º fresh cross wind. The thermals were very broken, but strong enough in places to get us to 2000 ft. The landing was however another story.

My previous experiences with 26L have not been good, especially when the wind is blowing. Normally the instructor tells me to come in high with a VERY short final approach. That way we dive onto the runway at speed.

This time it was a long final, I kept the speed at 120 km/h to make provision for the wind gradient that I knew was coming. Only problem was, I didn’t expect it to be quite so severe. As we hit the gradient it felt as if the plane suddenly dropped a few metres and the nose pitched down. I got a big fright and immediately closed the brakes, the plane ballooned and with the help of the instructor I flared and landed.

Later he explained that what I had felt was not the plane dropping, but a sudden deceleration from 120 km/h to 100 km/h. So I should just kept on going and not adjusted the brakes as 100 km/h was still fine. Makes sense now, but at the time it felt very uncomfortable. So that’s another lesson learned. Total cost for the day: 117,80ZAR.

Left home at 8:30 and arrived back at 20:00, so that was a full 11½ away from home. The wife was not impressed. I feel guilty, but what can you do.

I tried to reassure her by saying that once I had my license I would be less at the airfield, but while I am a student I need to grab every flying opportunity that comes along as well as flying as frequently as possible so as to flatten my learning curve.

The ridge was working well enough to keep the glider up and between 700 and 1000 feet AGL. My turn arrived with instructor F(2) and after a nice challenging take off from 16L we headed straight for the ridge. On takeoff the plane weather cocked rather seriously into the wind, even though I launched with the left wing a little low, full right rudder seemed to take forever to straighten the plane and deviate it from its chosen course towards the long grass and bushes.

On the way up while I was pulling back on the stick the speed started to bleed off to about 100km/h, so I levelled off a little and rocked the wings to signal for more power, which arrived nicely. The instructor was a little curious regards my decision to do this, but seemed to agree after I explained it too him.

On arriving at the ridge I was promptly reprimand for a bad decision to join, which under review was wrong, but made sense to me at the time. We arrived in the middle at 850ft (150 ft clear of the top) and I had to decide whether to go left or right. To my right was a glider following the ridge and heading away, so I decided to turn right to follow it, this resulted in us flying over the ridge. My reason being that it was better to follow the glider, less traffic congestion, and that we were high enough above the ridge for the manoeuvre. He however said that as we did not know the prevailing conditions at the ridge, it was unwise to fly over it and I should have rather stayed clear of the top and thus should have turned left. If we had encountered severe sink it might have pulled us into the mountain.

I soared the ridge for an hour, finding a few very nice strong bubbles and managed to keep the plane at 1000 feet for a good long while. Later an ASW17 joined us and the Single Astir and this made for lots of interesting neck craning. I was rather impressed with myself as I a managed to stay above both planes for most our time there.

I planned the whole circuit and executed the landing with zero verbal or other input from the instructor. The landing went off well, except that the cross wind pushed us way to the right. I noticed the drift too late to do much about it and had no option but to land well off centre. Not serious as there was nothing for the right wing to hit.

So it was a very nice and hot (30º C) day in the sun = ZAR155,50.

The day started off with a sombre reminder of last Saturday’s accident, when I noticed the wreck of the plane that had crashed, neatly packed in a far corner of the hangar. The previous day some of the members had retrieved the wreck off the mountain and had cleared the crash site of all debris.

It’s a weird and unsettling feeling looking at the bits and pieces of a machine that once gracefully flew the skies and realizing that the sum of its pieces doesn’t necessary make an aeroplane.

Flying started late (14:30) as it took eight of us over 3 hours to assemble the Twin. The damn wings would just not go on. There seemed to be nothing wrong, just that the fittings where rather tight, perhaps due to the high ambient temperature. It was back breaking work, but eventually it was done.

I enjoyed a nice 40 minute soar with instructor F(1) along our ridge, which included some nice thermalling, and practiced one further circuit. All went off very well and just my flaring let me down again. Either it’s too early or I pull back too quick and the nose lifts.

Something I found a little disconcerting, and this is not the first time that it has happened, is that the pilot at the back trusts his instruments over mine and over his and my perception. We started the circuit way too high. I looked down at the ground and said: “Aren’t we too high, let’s extent the downwind”. He let me extent it a bit before saying: “Turn base”. My altimeter read 1000ft. I pulled full brakes all the way through base and then finals and about 500m from the threshold he takes over and side slips the plane, handing control back to me about 20m from the ground.

Later we find that his altimeter is under reading by 200ft. The thing here is that I am trying to rely more on my perception when judging the circuit and less on the altimeter. So this whole side slipping thing could have been avoided if he had just trusted me some more.

One nice flight and one circuit: ZAR147,40.