May 2013
Flight of the Month went to Mark and Fabiano for pioneering a site in Franschoek:
Mark's story:
Today was one of those amazing days I'll
never forget. Fabiano and I pioneered a site. Well, more Fabio. He found the
spot, checked it out, found the landing and decided to go fly it. I just got
him to send me off first so I had a wireman. Flying the site was awesome. The sun had
vanished behind the clouds, but we still managed to climb up 2975' AMSL. We
chased each other around the skies for 1 hr 30, and I have a sneaking suspicion
that Fabio secretly wanted to wing walk my glider till he realised I
had a king post! What an awesome experience. I tried to chase
Fabios slippery technora T2C - but couldn't keep up, even with my VG on full.
Fortunately, I could take tighter corners which made me feel like I was keeping
up (just in a smaller circle). Eventually the sun came back out the clouds,
we had more lift and a whole bunch or large buzzards came to fly with us.
Interesting to watch them outperform us at the top of the lift! They seemed to
enjoy having us around and happily flew alongside us! Eventually I decided to go land, which was
interesting seeing that I was about 2000' above landing when I got there. Makes
the approach a little strange. Fortunately there was a nice river to
go and check out and try find some sink over. No sink, but still cool to
explore the river. I did a UBER smooth landing on my U2.
Finally figured it out - super simple - just treat her like a lady. I'm so
stoked with my U2. She's just the bomb!
