| Date | Aircraft | Route | Flight Time | Total Hours |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 14 April 2018 | SR22T | FALA – FARG – FALA | 0 – Ride along | 57.6 |
Ongoing maintenance issues with the flying school aircraft mean I’m grounded for the moment. Fortunately my flying buddy Ari came to the rescue this weekend. He owns an SR22T and was kind enough to let me tag along on his flight on Saturday.
Saturday dawned CAVOK at my house but wouldn’t you know it, was Marginal VFR by the time we had refuelled. Plan was to fly to Rustenburg(FARG), land, swap pilots and then head back. Fortunately we were able to depart VFR. I can report that the SR22 (G5)is very comfortable in the back. Sadly I was forced to use the Bose A20 ANR headset which was laid on. (Life is really tough..) Sheesh. They make a HUGE difference.
It is very different in the back. It’s great to be able to observe the procedures and flows from a non flying perspective. Ari is very methodical and correct – nice to see and confidence inspiring. They use the full checklist on the Perspective avionic system – usual procedure for the flight school is to do everything from memory and then run the pre-takeoff checklist prior to calling “ready in the bay”. I think I may well revert to using the full checklist in future – sealing up those potential Swiss cheese holes.
I’m always impressed by the performance of the SR22T compared with the SR20. Of course this is obvious at the elevated field where our 20’s are probably well short of rated 200hp whereas the turbo is still doing 310hp. It makes a big difference. As we climbed through the fog layer which was about 200ft thick the visibility improved greatly and we cruised out toward Rustenburg between the layers. Technically VMC but I wouldn’t have been happy flying on a solo nav in these conditions. Some (very impressive) slow flying followed – to hold the plane at 69kts for 5min is no mean feat – at 68 the stall warning goes…
We landed at Rustenburg (FARG) where they seemed quite excited to have us – they were obviously having some kind of event – but we were landing, changing pilots and leaving again – after we’d back taxiied along the runway stopping to remove dead birds along the way. Quite strangely these didn’t seem to be due to aircraft strikes as the carcasses all seemed reasonably intact.
At Lanseria our fears of deteriorating visibility had come to fruition. “Alpha Romeo India, the field is IMC, please state your intentions…” A large bank of low cloud/fog had settled over the base and final sector.. Now this is where having a little bit of savvy helps. The controller is not allowed to offer Special VFR but you can ask for it. Which we did. Special VFR allows one to enter the TMA under visual flight rules when the field is IMC as a result of poor visibility, provided you remain clear of cloud and with the ground in sight at all times. Which we did and in no time we were stuffing the aeroplane back into the hangar (which does involve moving another plane out of the way first)
A great morning’s flying coming out of what looked like a very marginal day. As they say, the hardest part is coming to the airport and NOT flying. It’s much better when you can actually fly. No hours for the logbook this week but a great experience
