Oh Fog!

Friday, 13th
Today was the first time in a long time that I was up before 8am (I’m definitely not a morning person). I eagerly made my way to BP to get some petrol for the plane, and then headed towards the airfield. Not even 5km from home, the weather went from sunny to fog.

Oh well, I’ll take my time putting the fuel in and maybe it will burn off. Almost an hour later, and no improvement. Okay, I’ll go and have some coffee. After 30 minutes, there was still no improvement. Great. The met office said it should start to clear... Rule of thumb, when the met man says something, expect the exact opposite ;)

So instead of flying, I went to Cape Town in search of boots. That mission was also unsuccessful.

Saturday, 14th
Yes, sunny with a light breeze. I went for a walk around the neighbourhood, and when I looked to the north and west, I was greeted with walls of fog. Right then, no flying for me today.

Monday, 16th
Fog isn’t bad in Stellenbosch, it’s just hazy. So I decided to stay close to the field and do circuits. They went well, and I was quite happy even though I wanted to log at least 1.5hrs and I ended up with less than half of that.

Tuesday, 17th
Finally, good weather! After studying in the morning, I went to the Club and dragged my little yellow bomber out of the hanger. The plan? Fly to Dimerskraal. One of my friends had been nagging me about flying, and he had some free time, so he came along at the last minute.

My first landing at Dimerskraal seemed to be going well, but I took power just as the wheels touched in a perfect 3-pointer (I thought the ground was further away than what it actually was). The second landing was a real landing, and we stopped and taxi’d around a bit. Now, Dimerskraal is a little dirt strip with one heck of a slope (that isn’t constant), and I hadn’t been there for a while, so it was great knowing I could still get in and out there. And it’s also quite a nice little strip.

On the way back we routed ‘low-level’ (everyone seems to have a different definition of low-level. My policy is that if it isn’t safe, you’re too low. If it is safe, fly just above that.) The stretch between Dimerskraal and Stellenbosch is full of power lines, trees, vineyards, and little fences. So while one can fly 100ft off the deck, if your engine coughed, you’d stand a greater chance of ploughing into one of the aforementioned obstacles.

We returned to FASH, and I managed to put her down nicely (I even got some compliments from some of the members). Another 1.6hrs done, 50-something to go until I hit the 200hr mark.

Oh dear.