|
Saturday
flying |
|
14-Dec-13 |
|
|
|
|
|
Dave
Crocker waits patiently in the shade for his flight
with Bernard "Speedy" Gonsalves in
ES-52 Kookaburra GLM (parked tail into the fence
to the left side of the flight line!).
|
|
|
--------------------
From: Lindsay
Mitchell
Date:
Sun, Dec 15, 2013 at 5:50 AM
Subject:
Saturday Flying
To:cgcmemlist@vicnet.net.au
Saturday
promised to be a hot humid day and the weather gods
kept their promise.
Garrett
again was the L2 for the day with Rod Elsworth, Nick
Sheahan and Rupert Perry sharing the DP duties.
Rod Wilson was the rostered AEI with Steve Chapman
performing the noise duties up front in SPA.
Another example of great club spirit when it appeared
we could be short of a DP and we had 3 last minute
volunteers.
Garrett
initially couldn't find the Blanik dolly until he
looked beside the aircraft and there it was from the
day before. Please remember to do a last minute
visual check of the aircraft when packing up.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
SPA
required some of Bert's TLC so we used the time to rig
the Club Libelle after it's Annual Inspection.
Speedy took the opportunity while the aircraft was out
of the air to do some cosmetic work on the cockpit and
clean up some paint cracks on the fuselage. Thanks
Speedy, the aircraft looks great.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Operations
commenced on RWY12 with 2 flights by Speedy and Kevin
in their Kookaburra pride and joy. These
were followed by 4 flights in the Blanik, 2 in the
IS-28 and I had 2 flights in the Clubbie. Rod
Elsworth had the pleasure of Bert's company in the
Blanik for an hour and 7 minutes. I'm confident
Rod would have learnt a lot in that time. It was
a quiet training day for Garrett with only 2 flights.
It was not a day for comfortable longer flights
with fairly heavy humid air currents and disorganised
thermals.
12
flights for a total time of 5hrs 49min.
My
2 flights in the Libelle were interesting. The
first was the evaluation flight when I did not find
any lift at all after doing the flight envelope checks
and was back in 16 minutes. I decided to do a
second for my enjoyment and did 1hr 27 in patches of
good but broken lift that made me work but of real
interest was at the end. I had good height
joining X-wind 06 when I encountered a very heavy sink
hole and lost about 400 ft and had to modify and land
on 12. I have never encountered sink like that
before and especially that low. To go from 1000'
X-wind to 750' thinking of joining a close downwind to
350' moments later was not a good experience. While
not pleasant at the time it does remind us that we
have to always be ready for the unexpected.
|
|
|
|
|
|
Dave
Crocker finally made it to the flight line with
Speedy. We think that the hands on show are both
Speedy's ... however, with the seating arrangement in
the Kookaburra you just can never be sure! Feeling
around for the trim lever in flight goes a long way
towards making you trusting close friends after a
Kookaburra flight ... even if you weren't
before!
|
|
|
|
Have
great safe fun,
|
|
|
|
|
Lindsay
Mitchell
|
