My Flying

I spent the best part of Saturday morning at the airfield re-doing some of the wiring on the single. At the same time I did some neatened up behind the panel and under the seat where wires and vacuum hoses lay in some apparent bazaar and entangled multiple serpent mating orgy.

The gliding weather looked really yech, sorry YECH, but as I was at the airfield and hadn't flown the motor-glider for a good month, I decided to take it for a spin and at the same time become a little more acquainted with the navigational aspects of my new gliding software and PDA.

I flew down the Elands River Valley, or the Rocklands Valley in power plane speak, covering the ground at a decent 100 kph following the little arrows on the PDA towards my destination, a little private airstrip at the far end of the valley. I was climbing slowly, over rising ground, at a mind blowing 0.5 to 1 m/s at 2000 rpm and arrived over the airstrip at about 4000 ft MSL.

I then made a U-turn and headed back, this time playing with the final glide computer. Bearing in mind that it could not calculate wind, do to my straight flying and it was programmed with the polar for the Astir CS, I selected the time I thought good to shut the power and to try to glide back. The arrival altitude started at about 600m and kept slowing dropping to 200m by the time I arrived, after a 25 km final glide. Not bad for a first attempt I though. Of course the Limbach up front added a large amount of comfort.

I then practiced and performed three really creppy circuits onto 26L into a slight cross-wind.

The flight was a little boring, but some decent knowledge was gained at a rather pricey 533.00ZAR.