The 3 phases of flying.

[Bennie Vorster]

birdy

06-15-2006, 03:28 AM



P1; Nervous or apprehensive.
Anyone who says they were never nervous at the start were either lieing or fooln themselves. Its natural and normal to fear sumthn that humans are not physicaly designed to do.
Fear is your friend, he keeps you alert, keeps your mind on the job and your eyes open. And its only when your desire to fly overrides your fear of flying, then you can fly.

P2; Relaxed and confident.
After you'v overcome the nerves and can't wait to go for your next blap, and nuthn mum nature serves up will ground you, your at the 'safest' phase of your flyn. Your still obsessed with your machine's health, you can't stop admiering your pride n joy and keep it in tip top shape.
You also keep tryn and practicing to perfection new moves and pushing your/your machines limits. Theres not a day you wouldn't fly and nowhere you wouldn't go, coz you'v got the feel and have the confidence to tackle anythn that may arrise.

P3; complacency.
If you survived your beginers nerves without a spill, and sailed through phase 2 without a glitch, then wakeup, coz getn complacent is next and is far more dangerous than anythn you'v done before.
Flyn to you is now like a walk in the park. Its 'ho hum' stuff, no big deal. You get lazy with your technique and your maintainance. You havn't bent it in thousands of hours, and you'v flown it in some horrendous air at suicidel attitudes without even raising a hint of a sweat. Its easier than riden a bike. Your confidence in the machine and your own ability is leading you to think your bullet proof.
Its also when Murphy will catch up with you, mainly through lazy maintainance.

Fortunatly for me, Murphy hasn't found me ...............yet.
I'm in the complacency stage, and i never fail to supprise me how lazy i am.
Probably the only negative i'v found with rotax 4bangers is, they tend to breed complacency, coz they never give you reason to think they'll stop maken noise. But as everyone knows, every machine will fail, eventualy. And the engine is the most complicated part of a gyro, so you think "if it don't fail, everythns sweet. Besides, even if it did fail, i can put it down safely from any hight and att."

I'v been lucky enough to have had a bloke here for the last few weeks who's also a gyro nut, but he isn't at p3 yet, and thanx to him, i'v 'fixed' a few things that i'v been mean'n to fix for a long time. It was getn to the stage where i was getn embaressed by the things he found on my machine that needed attention.
Lack of time or " i forgot" is no exuse for slack maintainance.
When he left i thought to meself," pull ya head in stupid, you can't fly, you only sit in a machine that can fly.............. if you look after it".

You know how you are, and thanx for the wake up call mate, I needed it.
I'v just spent a full day in the hanger, and recon i got at least 3 more days to go.

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