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Circuits

14/05/2006

Permalink 19:52:35, by admin, 282 words   English (ZA)
Categories: student, twin astir, dimona, take offs & landings

Arrived at 9:30am and everything was very quiet. Took a nice 42 minute P2 seat flight in one of the another member's Dimona motor glider. Did alright on the takeoff, practiced some thermalling and a few steepish turns. Nice and cheap and only really needed to pay for petrol.

Runway 08The instructor F(3) arrived at 1:00pm and we wheeled out the Twin Astir and walked it out to 26L after first having sorted out the winch. After the DI and pre-flight checks I tried my first real take-off, dropped a wing, went skew and generally stuffed up. After an extended 8 minute flight the circuit was skipped and we swooped in. The whole approach was new to me, skipped the circuit, came it at 90° to the threshold then a hard right and planted it. All very unsuccessful on my part, mainly along the lines of pulling back too hard on the stick in the flare and getting the plane to balloon up.

The wind started to pick up while the cable break from the previous launch was sorted out and was blowing SW at about 30 km/h gusting rather strongly at times. During the last two flights the wind would sometimes rather violently yaw the aircraft, but nothing I couldn't handle.

The second take off went much better, 5 minutes later we were back. Really mucked up the landing. Apparently I was too slow with the brakes out. Third take off wasn't bad and the landing 6 minutes later was barely o'k, but the best of the three. We did a normal left hand circuit this time. All-in-all good quality time, especially considering that I was the only student there. Three winch launches and 19 minutes totalled 139,20ZAR.