My Flying

The day started off nice and calm, but by the time the instructor F(3) arrived the wind was beginning to blow very fresh from the West. Flying was ready to start at about 12:30pm from 26L, but by now the wind was gusting to a healthy 45 km/h.

The first flight was mine. The launch went well at the beginning, but because of the high wind we quickly reached the 120 km/h speed limit. After doing the standard tail wag (yaw hard left then right) the winch driver slowed things down, but we were soon again up to 120 km/h, only way out now was to dive, as any wagging from our side would have broken the rope.

The circuit planning and landing was very tricky and the instructor took over on several spots. Two other student flights later, it was decided to stop flying for the day. Rather disappointing. One flight of 4 minutes = 42,20ZAR.

A visting Stemme S10 motor glider.

Yesterday it rained for just about the whole day and the sky looked very overcast this morning. As I needed to refit the gear-not-down warning unit, now with a new alkaline battery, I headed for the club.

Very quiet. Took a short P2 flight in the Falke with another member. One of the other students arrived and we tried to tackle the non-functioning radio issue that affected the Twin last week. Disassembled lots of bits, but could not find the problem. So it was decided to remove the unit for repair.

As the glider was not fit to fly and the instructor never arrived, another member gave us a short 20 minute informal lecture on standard visual arrival and departures routes as well as the radio calls and reporting points for FAPE. Well worthwhile.

In aircraft crash investigation they often talk of the chain of events. This is an occurrence of certain events that take place leading up to a crash, where if any one of the events had or had not occurred, the crash would most likely have been averted.

This is today's chain of events. Firstly, during the DI of the Twin I noticed that the gear not-down warning buzzer's battery was flat. I removed the unit and as no replacement battery was available I reported this to the instructor on duty. We would fly without it.

The glider is towed to 08. I drive down to the winch to watch the launches from there and to start learning how to operate the winch. The cellphone rings. Did I check the Twin's radio during the DI as it is now not working. I report that I did and that it was working fine. The second link is created. So we send a spare handheld unit to use for operations.

After watching three launches I head to the launch point for my flights. A new instructor F(6) greets me, and though he is extremely experienced, he hasn't instructed for some time now. Link number three. The first flight goes well enough and we soar the ridge for ½ hour before landing. After 10 minutes into the second flight I decide to land, as practising circuits is more important to me. At this point the battery on the handheld starts to die; link number four starts to form. On the extended downwind leg I hear the instructor behind me trying to use the radio and link number four is completed.

So my finals are messy (as usual, though I am trying very hard). I hold off on touch down. The glider sounds like it hits the ground hard, but there is no bounce, just these horrible scrapping grinding sounds and small bits of grass and dust entering into the cockpit. The plane stops and we both wonder, what the hell happened? The answer: The gear is still up.

Link 1: non functioning no-gear-down warning buzzer. Link 3: an instructor other than the one that was briefed regards link 1. Links 2 and four, during the downwind part of the circuit I did not completed my downwind checks and as the radio's non operation caused a distraction, this was never noticed. And so the chain of events was completed.

Rather scary how all the pieces seem to just fall into place after the event. Fortunately, as the grass was nice a green and soft, the glider only lost some of it’s paint and was up and operating a few minutes later.

I took one last short flight later that day. Mucked up just about everything, except the launch, which I though went very well. So that's three flights with a total of 49 minutes equals 193,20ZAR and a BIG lesson learned.

It was rather a disastrous week when the drought we were experiencing came to a sudden and abrupt end on Wednesday night with over 300mm of rain failing in 36 hour period causing huge flood damage and some sad loss of life.

When I arrived at the airfield the hangar was still fortunately intact and no damaged had been caused, but for a few slightly wet aircraft. The Falke went for two short flights before the chief flying instructor arrived and deemed the runways safe to use, but was concerned that the gliders might make ruts in it's surface; hence there would be no flying.

Shortly before this we needed to extract the Falke from the mud when it got stuck on one of the taxiways. In place of flying we received an hour lecture on basic flying principles like the airfoil, angle of attack, lift, spins, stalls, circuit patterns, safe use of airbrakes and more; all very interesting and useful.

There was also a visit by a little red tail dragger and some Paragliders.