The Flying Fish

I've just been feeling very lazy and rather uninspired to write anything. Life has been quite dull (what else is new?). My friends are heading off to university and college, and I'm parking off at home, trying to study 4 hours a day (right now I'm managing about 2.5hrs). Murphy has been up to his tricks as usual, and despite the wonderful (yet hot) weather, I've been unable to fly as the plane is undergoing some maintanance (again, what else is new?). So now I sit around the house or at the airfiled, and study occasionally. I'm writing Flight Planning and ATG next month. Hold thumbs for me! Throughout the month there have been times when I've had good ideas for a blog post, but in typical Me-fashion, I didn't write them down and now I've forgotten what they were. I'm so clever! On Saturday I played some airsoft. It's the second time I've played, and - like the first time - it made me realise how horribly unfit I am. But it was still fun. Hmmm...

... are quite something. Sitting outside, listening to near silence while watching the sun sink below the horizon is a truly amazing experience. Watching them from the air is almost as good as watching from the ground. I say ‘almost’ because one can’t generally watch the entire sunset unless they are night rated, or flying with someone who is night rated. And the drone of the engine eliminates that near silence, effectively removing some of the awesomeness. Yesterday (Thursday) evening I had the opportunity to witness a sunset from the cockpit of a Jabiru, on an – almost – perfectly still evening. Cruising overhead vineyards, we had the beautiful green mountains on the one side, and the calm blue sea on the other, the sun slowly making its way below the horizon. It was one of those “Why didn’t I bring my camera with?!” moments. (Flying the Jab was almost as nice as watching the sunset.) But whether you watch sunsets from the ground or from the air, they are always beautiful. They’re ju...

It was the last day of 2010, so I figured "Hey, the weather isn't too bad, I should go fly." Great. After visiting Fisantekraal for a circuit and a go-around, I decided that the wind wasn't doing anything for me, so I made my way to Paarl. After that I thought a cruise around Franschhoek Valley would be nice. It was nice, but it was also slow. Leaving the Valley was great though because I had one heck of a tailwind. I felt like I was in a jet. Okay, not quite, but the Cubby hasn't flown that fast for a while. Anyway, when I got back to Stellenbosch the real fun started, and it was in the form of some idiot that is incapable of talking on the radio. I was doing circuits and minding my own business when this dolt came overhead, not bothering to tell me what he was going to do; "I'm overhead the runway," doesn't really help me. But he finally decided on what he was going to do and slotted into the circuit behind me. Cool. We were out of each other...