Cancelled

Cancelled at 4:00 AM so i went back to sleep only to find an sms 5 hours later sent at 5:30 saying to meet at the field at 6:30 cause the weather has improved... :(

Larry is on holiday till the 2nd of January but i have booked every day possible from then till the 9th...

Report back soon...

Plus 2

Another great days flying, it was much less cloudy this morning than yesterday and there wasnt any turbulence until 8:30. We did alot of very low level flying over crop fields again came back and did cross wind touch and goes and a last dead stick landing. Got some good video footage that i have edited have a look here...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LG8SKTiFKVc

Lessons 1-13, 19,20 and 22 completed . With 7.4 hours logged.

A great days flying...

Had an excellent days flying this morning, i was at the airfield nice and early and it was overcast and drizzeling but it stopped shortly after arriving and became the perfect day to fly. We started off with some circling of crop circles again but a few minutes later it got really exciting as we headed out to a crop field that Larry knew had no obsticles to fly into and we did some really low level flying !

Just a few meters off of the ground we sped down the rows of mielies, i was told to choose one furrow and try to follow it. For this you keep the power constant and use slight movements of the bar forward and backwards to rise and fall. We did this for a while and then headed back to the field. We did a simulated dead stick landing and took a short brake.

Again i did the take off mostly unassisted, we got in the air and joined the left hand down wind curcit, we did some more low level flying over the runway and we finished off with a last dead stick landing and that was that for today.

So far i have 5.4 hours logged and lessons 1-11,13 and 19 completed. There again tomorrow hopefully will add another 2 hours.

Going no where...

Lesson cancelled due to bad weather :(

Going up...

Got to the airfield this morning and the weather looked good, i was set to do a double lesson, so i did the checks and we got in the plane. Larry assisted me with the take off again we got some height and headed towards a large intersection on the ground where we continued to follow a road and then a railway track. Now i was told to circle around a large crop circle and keep my altitude at 6300ft and not to go 50ft higher or lower than that....problem was before we could get there i kept gaining altitude and couldnt get us to desend, the engine was at 2000rpm and we where still climimg(Larrys a/c needs a minimum of 4000rpm to maintain straight and level flight) so as you can see we had a problem. In the space of around 5 min the weather changed dramaticaly, it went from calm and smooth to violently turbulent.

Needless to say we got down on the ground as soon as possible cutting the lesson short, so i unfortunatly only got 0.7 hours logged this time round but i have another lesson tomorrow and i hope the weather will be better...

Lessons 1-11 completed and 3.2 hours logged

Lesson 2

Got to Bapsfontein at 5:00 AM this morning 3 hours earlier than lesson one and it made a big difference!! Lesson one was very bumpy, i couldn't get a feel for the plane and i had difficulty steering but today it was smooth as silk!. Larry and i did the pre-flight checks, making sure all the clips and caps where on and than every thing was as it should be. i taxied down to the other end the run way, tured around and got ready for take off. i got to sort of do the take off, Larry had his hands on the bars behing me and guided me in the right direction. The view from up there was awsome,the sun was low in the sky and gaps of light where shining through the clouds.

We headed out to the flying area and started following a straight line(again a road), this was nice and easy because it was so smooth up there, shortly after that Larry gave me a demonstration of a medium banked turn, i tried and it went well, you use the point where the wires from the weight shifter attach to the wing and line that up with the horizon which i think is an angle of about 30 degrees.

After a few of those we did some accending medium turns and later some decending medium turns. Towards the end of the flight we did some curcits of the air field and i got to do a low pass over it, a few curcits later and we landed.

I now have 2.5 hours logged and have completed lessons 1-8, booked for every day next week nice and early in the morning i should get alot done, will report back soon...

First Lesson

Ok, back from my first MPL lesson which ended up being with a nother instructor by the name of Dave, learnt all the pre-flight checks and got my log book ect. covered lessons 1-5 and have 1.5 hours logged. Did some turning but basicaly just tried to follow a straight line in the form of a sand road which is much harder than it looks with being blow around alot by the thermals and under or over correcting! Booked lessons for friday and saurday morning from 6:15-7:15 , will report back soon...