Flying in the Cape

[Free Spirit]

I haven't gotten used to the Cape wx - miserable most of the time. But when its good, its brilliant. Like yesterday. Most awesome trike flying to Eendekuil. Some guys had to fetch their aeries that stayed behind after last weekend... they blamed the wx but we all know better. Here are some pics.

[The Agent]

Some good shots there but keep it safe.

[Griffin]

Stunning FS. Feel free to post some more. Are you tempted to add a trike or two to your licence

[Morph]

Some guys had to fetch their aeries that stayed behind after last weekend... they blamed the wx but we all know better. Here are some pics.

It was the weather honest

Here are some more pics of the flight back. Frootbat, my humble photographer took these shots from the back seat. Unfortunately I have doors on so the lexan blurs the pics slightly.

[Morph]

More

[Morph]

More

[GR8-DAD]

I get this funny feeling I've been to this place before..... ....

Sorry I missed the re-visit Morph, but also went on a very nice flight to Loeriesfontein to Boet and from there on to Springbok and then back. and then a weeks leave.

Now we are having miserable Wx again, no flying

[Morph]

The last lot. It was great

[Morph]

However flying in the Cape isn't always good.

Yesterday the WX looked great. No wind, nice and cool. I took Ranger with me and we decided to fly around the Paardeberg mountains and back, about 1hours flying time. , I normally wouldn't do this if there is wind, but there was no wind right

As we started getting close to the mountains I decided to climb up and over the ridge. Suddenly we were hit with wind shear and rotors pushing us down. I immediately turned away from the mountain and deduced that there was a very high speed easterley, coming from behind the mountain, we were approaching from the west as thus on the leeward side Not a good idea. I continued to climb to get away from and above the rotors and eventually at 3500 ft it started smoothing out. We were also now to the south of the mountain and out of the effect of the rotors. We continued around the back of the mountain ( eastern side and thus the upwind side) and experienced 40MPH headwinds at 3500ft. I opted to reduce altitude to see if the headwind would reduce as well This did until at 1500 AMSL the headwind was only 20MPH.

As we came around the northern side of the mountain I turned west again and had a sudden boost of groundspeed from 55 MPH to 95mph. I made sure we had a wide berth to the north of the mountain before heading west so as not to be affected by the rotors on the other side. We routed directly west until I felt we were far enough away from the mountain and then turned south west and routed back to Morning Star.

Within 30 minutes it had gone from calm and cool to moerse tailwind and thermally bumpy as hell. At some stage we hit a standing wave, freefalling at 500fpm and then suddenly climbing. I reduced throttle on the climb and rode the wave. Once through the bucking broncho continued to bounce us around.

I was not looking forward to Morning Star, but with the tailwind it came up very quickly. I look at some dams to judge the wind direction and it was showing SW at ground and we were experienceing NE tailwind at 1500.

Joined overhead, anticipated the wind shear as we decended between the NE and SW and came in fairly fast, 70mph, whereas I normal approach 2up at 65mph. Touched down a little late and with the added speed needed the whole runway to stop, including shutting the motor off to aid with the breaking. Safe and sound and a big eye opener.