My Flying

No real surprise that there was no flying to day; just one of those instructors who seldom pitches. Pity, as the wind was blowing at around a nice 35 km/h, South Easterly right onto the ridge.

The rest of the crew were all there and we helped out de-rigging and re-rigging the Falke for its Certificate of Airworthiness. Also took a short 15 pax ride in the Falke after it had been taken for its test flight.

Just as I was leaving for home, I noticed a few left over pieces from the Falke's CofA, lying on a chair in the corner. Fortunately, the pieces were non essential, but it just goes to show you...

The day started off wet, there was a lecture on thermalling and then actual thermalling. Correct, you heard me right. Thermalling at FAUH! The theory all sounds good, that's of course until you try and put that mass of information to practice, then it's a little trickier.

Talking of trickier, I made my first blank panel flight. Not nearly as bad as I thought it would be, both the ASI and altimeter were blanked off for my first launch and the subsequent flight. I found it relatively easy to do medium turns keeping it at 80 km/h and trying to stay in the thermal. The ASI was back for the landing. I also needed to estimate my altitude for the landing which I did ok. I started downwind on 500ft. It should have been 700ft, but a 200ft difference is not bad in my books.

The second flight was late in the afternoon and pretty darn amazing. At one stage we had thermalled up to 3200ft, which by the way, is the highest I've ever thermalled. Cloud base was at about 3800 ft. We flew for 52 minutes, which is also my longest flight in the Twin.

Unfortunately both landing sucked big time and was due in part between a communication break down between instructor F(5) and myself and I seem to have taken a confidence knock in that department. Never-the-less I had 80 minutes of great thermalling equalling 214ZAR.

After last weeks flying, today was a bit of a let down. The first flight went well because at last I had a chance to practice some thermaling. It was very broken, but with lots of hard work we kept the plane up for 26 minutes, it could have been longer, but there were others also wanting a chance to fly.

The wind was now gusting 35 km/h and the second flight with instructor F(1) was just to practice a circuit. It went ok, but the steep angle of approach caught me a bit unawares, as compared to the previous few weeks calm flying conditions, so I didn't judge the round out very well.

All the takeoffs went very well, but the third landing was a bugger up. Mucked up the round out and put the plane down a hard.

By now the wind gusting 45 km/h. There were some aero-tows and then the Twin's tail wheel gave up the ghost, prematurely ending the day's flying. My job is to find a replacement by next Sunday. Three flights for 35 minutes = 168ZAR.

A few photos I took during PE's 2006 airshow.

Slow fly past by a SAAF Cheetah D.

A twin turbine Orxy medium transport helicopter loads off some troops.

The last flying Mirage III CZ - The Blackwidow.

A privately owned airworthy Hawker Sea Fury.