Weekend News

3^rd – 4^th December 2011

During the Week:

• Our sympathy to Peter and Bruce Clemence on the loss of their father during the week.
• The Vicky Westers, namely;  Durr, Jac, John, Nicky, Graham, Peter F, Ari, Dylan, Rudi, Hansie, Helmuth, William and Rien  left for the Annual Camp at Victoria West.  They were joined by Sigmund Roher and Gavin Stevens from Port Elizabeth. Unfortunately Mike Pascoe was not able to attend. Our S/Cub, MIV, was at the camp thus necessitating the use of  the Rotax at FAWC during  the summer heat!
• Further robberies took place and in spite of hiring a security guard, who commenced patrolling on Saturday night, John S. hangar was broken into that night and a ‘bag’ taken out of his glider. On examining their ‘loot’ outside they opened the bag and had a parachute explode in their faces! Needless to say it was found abandoned in the adjacent field the following morning.

Saturday 3^rd: Our Visitors from last week, namely Markus and Dolf with Karin and Lynore were still at the field. See there reports on ‘Worcester Magic’ below.

Frans du Toit was Tuggie, Jimmy Dipper the Duty Pilot and Sven Olivier the Instructor. Only flying Peter W, Makus Greisen, Martin and Karin in the Taurus and Sven did a PAX flight and the an instructional flight with Jimmy. ( See Timesheet for details).

The Worcester Flying Club held a very well attended Xmas Party. Partying went on to the early hours of the morning with a Band from Somerset West.

Sunday: The previous evening Martin G (at the bar!) had forecast the day of all days weather-wise! How wrong you were Martin! Alison was duty pilot , Andre tuggie and Kevin the duty Instructor.  Glen Wright was the only pupil and Steve Evans, a visitor from the UK, where he had flown from a ‘winch club, wanted to experience an aerotow flight.

Dolf and Markus were loaded with water and ready for the flight of flights!  They were both back under the hour. In the meantime the temperature had increased to the mid-thirties and this proved too much for the Motor Falke. The last two flights had to be waved-off when the oil temp red-lined.

Some comments on interacting with the CT Flight Information Service (thanks to Peter Wooley).

Nearly all CGC pilots know everything about this subject already, but for the tiny minority who have not yet had the opportunity to interact with the ACT’s on the Cape Town Flight Information Service (131,125), but who plan to fly out from below the umbrella of the Cape Town TMA, the intention here is that the following points may serve as encouragement for the required radio interaction.

Having recently been named and shamed with two of my fellow CGC pilots for flying on TIBA frequency instead of CT Information (131,125), I resolved to make sure I got it right the next time.  This happened sooner than expected, so on Saturday 3 December I was required to open with CT FIS when I reached the Keeromberg, heading east.  This is not very far from FAWC.  The following points are relevant though the list may be far from complete:

1. The radio reception was loud and clear.
2. The controllers (at least three different ones during the flight) were friendly, patient and spoke clearly (though they would, no doubt, be helped in their work if briefed by us on how soaring works).
3. They DID ask me to fly Flight Levels but were happy once I explained the impossibility of this.
4. The only traffic they were aware of during the whole easterly leg was the sky divers at Robertson.
5. They wanted to give me a squawk code, so I had to tell them the aircraft was not equipped – most transponders would probably deplete a glider’s power supplies fairly quickly.
6. Basically all ‘Information’ requires are call sign, current position, altitude, direction (heading), next place, and estimated time of arrival there (ETA is more a “guestimate” and I explained that it depended on the met, which they appeared happy to accept).
7. They do give you some information to digest, but basically all they ask  for (once you have the Flight Level business sorted out) is that you report at some forward point they name – such as “Report Robertson next”).
8. So you report when abeam Robertson and go through the whole procedure again – and pretty soon you are all just about old friends.
9. Point to consider – they work in nautical miles.  If your instruments are set up in kph, consider using a handy conversion table so you can give them the distances in NM.
10. Point to consider – they work in UTC – consider setting your GPS to UTC.
11. Point to consider – all this talking consumes POWER.  Ensure that you have adequate battery capacity, as with two fully charged 7a/h batteries, I was well into my second battery by the end of the flight.
12. Towards the end of the flight, when I called FIS to advise them I would be returning to TIBA at FAWC, I told them it had been my first flight “with” them and thanked them for a good experience.  They sounded pleased to hear this, and closed by telling me to enjoy the rest of my flight.  Basically they could not have been nicer to deal with.

Worcester – Magic! As experienced by Markus Greisen

Unlike the last years where I stayed in Gariep Dam to fly from there, this years travel schedule to South Africa should omit the Karoo save for a visit to Still Baai, the home of our friend Dawid (Dolf) Pretorius. Although Dawid had a quite busy work schedule, we still decided that we should get in some flying time. Knowing that Dawid’s club operates from Worcester and having both visited the place on the ground, but also had a look at some of flight tracks on the OLC, I suggested a short visit there to get to know the place. Dawid secured himself Nico le Roux’s ASW 20 and kindly offered me his LS 8-18m. On Friday the 25^th we set off to Worcester with 1Z on tow.

On Saturday the wind was blowing quite strong from the SE and after a quick check ride I took 1Z towards the ridge and followed Dawid and Martin who launched earlier with the Taurus. Cloud base was quite low, just a couple of hundred feet above the ridge and it got lower towards the East. After catching up with the Taurus near Ashton – they had gone as far East as Riverdale – Martin just asked me to follow the Taurus if I could manage. I could and Martin showed me just how fantastic the ridges work. Circling was not needed and the best integrated climb value in level flight was 6m/sec! Getting the flight tracks from our loggers saw Martin and Dawid flew some 520 km and I did 320 km, which I deemed appropriate for an lazy afternoon flight.

Saturday evening then saw a Braai with lots of interesting people at the clubhouse.

The next day we used to prepare the ASW 20 for a flight and we did a quick check flight in the evening running along Victoria Peak at low altitude until the daylight faded.

The weather for Monday looked promising and so we organized Jakkie the tug pilot to line up at 11:00. Checking again on the weather on Monday morning Dawid sensed that with the wind direction have turned more easterly and it would be difficult to get out of Worcester towards the east. Dawid reckoned that we go eastwards using the northern side of the ridge – allegedly it had been done before. This worked all very well for Dawid in the ASW 20, but not knowing the conditions well I elected to stay on the southern side of the ridge and found myself having to move towards Robertson airfield, struggling in thermals trying to stay up. This now cost me some time, so Dawid turned ahead of me at Tradouw pass, with me turning on the saddle between Montague and Barrydale. The way back to Worcester turned out to work better, as by now the thermal system had established itself. The forecast showed the wind system swinging towards west in the area north of Cape town, so our plan was to go from Worcester northwards over Tulbach , through the scenic Agter Winterhoek and along the low Porterville ridge. Mode of operation changed here again – we drove the two aircraft right down to ridge top height making good distance at high speed not even thinking about thermalling once. After turning at the end of the ridge at Renosterhoek our intentions were to get right down to Paarl and back again before returning to the site.

However this is gliding and things happened to turn difficult from there – with a slight turn of the wind to more southerly directions, the ridge, which was good for high cruising speeds on the way out now allowed only for crawling back at slow speed at ridge height. Right at the southernmost part of the ridge south of Porterville a weak thermal allowed for just enough height to jump over north of Saron and glide into the Tulbach valley where a conveniently placed thermal allowed us to gain sufficient height to move along the ridges of the Witzenberg to reach Worcester again via Waaihoek. I flew about 520km and Dawid logged about 560 in the ASW 20.

This flight was absolutely spectacular for me, with the good visibility and no clouds. I could see the Indian Ocean on the way out and on the way up north the Table Mountain was clearly visible and also the container ships on the Atlantic north of Saldanha. The rather local weather system needs a lot of experience to plan a flight, but the scenery is absolutely breathtaking. It changes quite a lot during a flight as the mode of operation changes constantly from ridge soaring, thermalling and utilising convergence lines over the mountains.

Having flown in many countries and from quite a variety of sites I would rank flying from Worcester as one of my top experiences in gliding!

Thanks to all the people who have made this experience possible.

Worcester Magic! – As experienced by Dolf.

I had an open invitation to visit friends from Cologne who we met gliding in Gariep for a number of years now. Hans, Karin, Doris Wiesenthal and Markus Geisen invited me to join them to fly in a local competition Mönchscheide near Cologne (The BBSW). The duo Discus we flew (owned by Markus Geisen and Karin Wiesenthal) was new to me, but a delight to fly and we did quite well overall to at least get a place on the high up the ladder (I only flew one day out of 6).

A further exploration of flying from Villacastin north of Madrid in Spain followed where Markus and I flew some long fast flights in 4Y – on one occasion we only lauchend at 12:30 to complete a flight of 950 km at 21:30 – see (http://www.onlinecontest.org/olc-2.0/gliding/flightinfo.html?flightId=707857363).

I invited them to fly in FAWC, where the story really begins. RAASA made the licence conversion really tedious, but with the help of Martin at Gariep (Magalies) the paperwork required at FAWC was minimal. Ari did a check ride with Markus and we were on our way.

Nico Le Roux was kind enough to lend me the use of CL, an ASW20BL that is a real delight to fly. The LS8 I own has some really good handling qualities, which I found hard to beat, but GRR still shows that AS had a winner in the 20BL. Great handling.

Martin Gruenert offered me to join him on Saturday in the Taunus to lead Markus. We were ready quite early and left toward Swellendam with a booming ridge ahead.

Deteriorating conditions near Albertinia turned us around and Martin commented on the FAWC Magic, with this the first foray direction George this season.

Markus Joined us on the return south of Ashton and we sped northwards to Audenberg realising that the cirrus over the west would prevent further flights into the valleys near Gouda and Porterville.

Martin showed us the regularity of Vic Peak in a south easterly and a booming Slanghoek (7.9 intergrated) later on. Wow! Waaihoek showed lift and again Slanghoek took us home. Nothing short of Magic!!

Sunday saw us having a short foray to Villiersdorp, and a run into the rotor behind Vic Peak, that reminded us of our fallibility, ending in a return to FAWC and a new strategy for the days ahead.

We elected to stay Sunday night and fly Monday because Dr Jack’s Blip Maps showed promising weather.

Early Monday morning I explored the forecast that showed that we needed to stay on the northern ridges, something I had know about, but never actually flow at FAWC.

Audenberg refused to work after Jakkie released me. Markus was already on Brandberg. The only solution was lift in the Hex north of Audenberg.

We progressed eastwards to the next face and managed to cross to Keeromberg on the northern slopes at reasonable speed.

Near Robertson Markus elected to stay south due to landing opportunities, which resulted in an only small delay in him joining me later on the ridge between Montague and Barrydale.

We passed the Hex river valley again over the high mountains, a great sight with Table mountain and the likes, proceeding via Witzenberg and the Agter Winterhoek pass to the Porterville ridge.

High speed low level racing followed but oh….. my…. slow down please….

The wind turned south and we limped home, in one piece… great memories…. Worcester Magic……

Markus Geisen

Dawid Pretorius

OLC – Dec 3^rd and 4th

144.84

Picture Gallery

Re-enactment of ‘Boet” pushing the Falke over his foot! – by Kevin M

Kevin taken by surprise while trying to secure the rip-cord handle on the club parachute (photo by Boet)

Willie Tschoppe’s new toy – T29 Trojan! – photo by Sven

Landed at FAWC – photo by Sven

Duty Pilots:- Saturday 10th Dec. Dylan  and Clio Sun 11th Dec. Peter Farrell

Compiled by ‘Woxie” with contributions by PeterWooley, Markus Greisen, Dolf Pretorius, Mike Pascoe and pictures by Sven, Kevin and Boet