After yesterday’s surprise storms none of us were very confident about the weather forecast and so the task today was designed to keep us reasonably close into the airport if storms developed again. I selected a 500km task from New Tempe up to Christiana, and then down to the diamond mine at Koffiefontein. At the…
We thought that today would be a great day so we had our pilot’s meeting an hour early with most of the gliders on the grid by 9:00 am. I declared an FAI type 750 km triangle (no leg less than 28%) with turnpoints at Klerksdorp and Reivelo. Each leg was about 255km. I launched…
We have been watching the weather all week looking at this weekend being really good. Today was an excellent gliding day – although it was completely blue – not a cloud in the sky. The official task was a 513 km flight out to Westpoint, down to an airport / dam called PK Le Roux,…
Today was my 60th birthday and they presented me with a big chocolate cake at the pilot’s meeting. It went with fish & chips for supper at the end of the day. I can’t imagine a better birthday than being here with friends flying gliders in November. The day was completely blue and we declared…
The weather here changes so fast. Last night it was really windy and the morning was cold and blowing. But, by the 10 am pilots meeting it had died down and was looking like a pretty good day. We set a 410 km chevron shaped task with the first turn at Westpoint (where we clear…
Today looked promising for thermal strength but with a real risk that high winds would blow the thermals apart. I launched second in line and got off at 1.4 AGL into a great 7.7 kt thermal that took me to 10.5 K altitude. I set out on course – and that was the last good…
Today promised to be warmer and we hoped for some better soaring conditions. Unfortunately the last two remaining visiting Vintage gliders, the Ka-8 and Ka-10, loaded up and left this morning. We were sorry to see them go but hoped that it meant good things for our potential. Pete VonTresckow and I had earned a…
Leah and I arrived late last night for the Vintage Sailplane Association‘s rally here at Chilhowee Gliderport. Unfortunately we weren’t able to bring a glider since we flew down on a Boeing 717 courtesy of Air Tran. However, we figured we would be able to rent some of the gliders here from Sarah and…
OK – so much for “I won’t fly until Wednesday”. Today turned out to be a really pretty good day. A new young German pilot did his first 300km (so he bought all the beer tonight) and one of the more experienced fellows did a bit over 400km. My Nimbus got done with the tail…
Every year I try to take a gliding vacation and in 2005 I visited South Africa for the first time and just fell in love with flying here. This is my 7th trip and, like earlier years, I will try to send on daily “reports” to friends back home. These daily reports really began as…
