Thursday, September 14, 2006

First fly in Burketown

Mostly just T/O and Landing practice. Did 6 circuits from where I took off on the salt flats and then had 3 40min flights until I ran out of fuel on the last one. It was the same fuel that has been cooking in the back of my car since Exmouth and you could feel that it was about 500RPM down on fresh fuel. I think I can scam some Avgas here, that should be much more interesting. It was quite thermic, the best climb rate I could sustain for a couple of minutes was 1800ft/min up, that was with the engine on because I did not want to upset the gliders balance by throttling off in such a fine climb. Worst sink was only 800ft down, but I experienced it right to the ground on a couple of the landings. Today I did all my T/O and landings on the base bar, my T/O technique has evolved to a low power run whilst I pick up speed and then full power as you T/O it feels much, much nicer than trying to get onto the uprights and there really is no point being on the uprights anyway now that I have got over the urge to flare and I run all the landings out. I actually discovered that with just a light breeze and holding onto the base bar alone it is easy to taxi as the glider carries the weight of the harness and you just have to steer. I think some roller-skates could be quite amusing if I can find some and a suitable flat surface to T/O from.
I'm feeling very confident with the fun and power combo now, It's time to grow up and master the Climax with power.
My caravan is ready to roll again, about 30 welds, 4 new leaf springs and countless rivets, screws and quantities of liquid nails and silicone later. I'm pretty confident it will last for a while. Its only now for the very first time since I have owned it that the door opens and closes easily, I suspect it was already quite damaged when I bought it. The motor glider boys are in town and have been getting up at 4am every morning chasing Glory, every morning I look at the Mornington radar and the grass and if there are no straight lines of clouds and no dew outside I just go back to sleep. I am not going to chase the Glory, it is going to come to me ;-)

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