After a successful navigation rally held some weeks ago the groundwork was laid for the resumption of Speed Rally flying. The season has been completely disrupted by the COVID pandemic with the second and third races being cancelled. There was much excitement when it seemed that we could continue with two further events this year.
And such it was that Steve and I found ourselves heading east on Friday afternoon to Secunda. Getting out to Rand Airport is a lot less of a schlep on a Friday afternoon than Baragwanath and the hangar attendant had pulled IBM to the front of the hangar so we were good to go – traffic levels at the airport are quite high and we were number 3 or 4 to depart for the short 70nm trip to Secunda (FASC).
My aircraft is back from annual inspection – what they say about the first annual is all true, sadly – was a lot more expensive than I was anticipating due to the 5 year rubber change, but that at least is done (until the next time – when I may also be looking at a BRS repack……). On the plus side, my plane is back and fit for flying again!
On the basis of the sticker shock from the rubber replacement we decided not to do any cosmetic work apart form installing the sun shade film on the canopy which has helped a lot to keep the cabin cool. I did this myself – it only took 2hours to apply it – a very fiddly job but the end result is satisfactory and seems to do what it is supposed to. It’s a PVC friendly static cling film that advertises 5% visible light transmission. I think it looks quite nice.
As I write this, ZU-IBM is in for annual inspection. This should only have been done in October, but the CAA is a bit of a hot mess at the moment, and it is taking 3-4weeks to get the airworthy certificate or Authority to Fly (ATF) after annual inspection so we moved it up a month. I suspect this is mostly because the AMO doesn’t want airplanes stuck on its ramp waiting for paperwork to be completed.
I think it will help to have moved the annual forward away from the ATF expiry date because that should mean that we can do a full year on the next cycle. Anyhow, this does basically qualify as the first year of ownership and looking back, I must say that it has been really good to own the aircraft.
We’ve done a few trips that we would never have done, and the freedom of being able to decide on a whim to go flying is seriously under-rated. So here follows a small summary of the year in ownership..
Hours flown: – 69,5
Fuel purchased: – 1154
Average fuel Burn: – 16litres per hour
New Airports visited: – 17
Passengers Flown: – 37 (obviously not separate individuals)
Of course, there will be at least one unexpected expense involved and this time it is the 5 year rubber renewal which involves changing every rubber hose and gasket in the engine compartment. It is a bit of a pain and an unexpected expense which could be deferred… but that is not how I want to operate my aircraft. Deferred maintenance is something that I feel will bite one day and will be an issue if/when I sell the plane (yes, that RV-7 is still calling….).
There are a couple of other squawks that need dealing with – for some reason the starboard strobe has decided to call it a day, and the landing light wires seem to get quite hot coming out of the switch on the panel – this may well be normal but it needs to be checked out. The oil pressure still runs lower than I’m comfortable with on the long climbs – although we have looked at the system I think another once-over won’t go amiss. My gut feel is that the issue may be the sensor, but that is the easy way to rationalise it.
Apart from all that, the only other job is to put a decal on the rudder – I’ve long wanted the chequered pattern on the plane so we’re putting it on the whole of the rudder. I trust it will look good. The idea I have is what is shown below…
So, with no plane and hopefully no more surprises… there is little to do but to wait patiently impatiently for news on when Miss Daisy will be back. Will update as and when needed.
I’ve been trying to get involved in competition flying for a long time, but it has always seemed to not work out for one reason or another. I’ve been able to go to see the rally taking place at Middelberg and Springs in the past but haven’t been able to take part. This weekend though, everything seemed to fall into place with a public holiday on Friday and the race being held nearby at the Secunda airfield (FASC) on the weekend.
Competition flying in South Africa seems to be undergoing somewhat of a resurgence at the moment after being stuck for years in a stodgy cycle of President’s Trophy Air Races marred by legal cases and appeals. Three event formats are currently taking place – Speed Rallies, Navigation Rallies and Fun Rallies. They are being held through the country (although mostly in the northern half, fortunately). Fun rallies involve flying a short course in a very narrow corridor, points being deducted for excursions from the corridor. Navigation rallies are plotted and flown to specific times and locations and are the more traditional form of competition rally flying in South Africa.
A band of low cloud over the northern part of the GF
General aviation is widely accepted to be in somewhat of a decline in South Africa. Thus it is quite exciting when an exhibition aimed primarily at the general aviation sector is scheduled – look, it’s not Oshkosh or Sun ‘n Fun but this is about as good as it gets for us locals. It is also quite unusual in that there was no airshow scheduled – only static and trade exhibits. The exhibition is Aero South Africa and it was billed as an offshoot of Aero Friedrichshafen
My airplane needed to go to the AMO to have some work done. This, as most aircraft owners will appreciate, is a real pain. To achieve this 10nm flight requires two adults, at least one car and a fair bit of patience from the non flying adult.
The usual rigmarole – drive to Baragwanath airfield. Drop off flying adult at Baragwanath. Non flying adult drives (usually in rush hour traffic) to Tedderfield while flying adult preflights and flies the aircraft to Tedderfield. Both adults then drive home. Understandably, this plan is not too popular with the non flying partner because it can be a 2.5h exercise when we have better things to do.
May and June are busy months from a flying admin point of view. My medical (which needs to be done annually) expires at the end of May. My PPL needs to be renewed by the end of June. This makes this a busy couple of weeks.
To renew my medical requires an annual audiogram, lipogram and eye test. To be honest, I can’t see why these need to be done yearly (perhaps with the exception of the eye test?). Having to go through a medical every year at my age (42) seems superfluous – especially since I know I’m in good health.
Oil. It’s quite important stuff in engines, especially in aeroplane engines. Considering the only thing keeping us up in the air is the engine it makes sense to keep a close eye on the oil.
He who is without oil, shall throw the first rod
Compressions 8.7:1
I have an issue with a low oil pressure reading. It would be less irritating if there was some oil floating around in the cowling, or a stripe down the fuselage, but no. Not a drop.
To say that the year thus far has not been great for flying is no understatement. As soon as MGL Avionics opened this year I sent my EFiS in for hardware upgrade and that took 2 weeks – where I (obviously couldn’t fly). As that came back and it was re-installed, the wet season arrived with a bang. We’ve been laboring under a ridge of high pressure which has been driving warm moist air from the Mozambique Channel down over Gauteng with resultant overcast and showers. In fact we had about 3 weeks of continual 7/8 to OVC (mostly on the weekends). However, the first signs of the late summer/early autumn period are starting and we’ve had a week or so of fantastic flying weather.
We thought we’d take advantage of this and do the “Sunday fly out to breakfast” thing. This was to be the first time we’d all gone flying as a family and would be a good test of IBM’s load carrying capacity. It should be noted that she’s no Cherokee 235 but with a useful load of 465kg four up is definitely a viable option.
Sunday dawned clear despite the forecast high overcast, so we loaded up and set off for the airfield. The preflight was accomplished fairly quickly thanks to my two helpers who are getting quite good at removing the plugs, covers and the 40kg of water ballast I keep in the rear when flying solo. After the obligatory fiddle with the goPro’s we were able to start up.
PreFlight assistance?
Date
Aircraft
Route of Flight
Hours
Total Hours
24 Feb 2019
ZU-IBM
FASY(Baragwanath) – GAV – FAPY(Parys, FS) GAV – FASY
1.4
126.4
There was a fair amount of activity on the field as we taxied out – someone was preflighting a Samba XL, my neighbor across the taxiway was (still) fighting with the autopilot in his Jabiru and someone was doing circuits in a Robin. For only the second time since I moved to BaraG winds were favoring runway 13 and we launched without issue. I expected a significantly longer takeoff roll being four up but it wasn’t a big issue – what did get my attention was the slower climb performance – my usual stick deflection produced a Vx climb at 65KIAS as opposed to the more routine 75KIAS but there is a ridge to the south of the airfield which needs to be crossed….
Hard to get this one wrong – straight lines for the win!
4 up in the Sling
Having negotiated the ridge we made a leisurely climb to 7000ft, progressed through the surprisingly quiet GF and made our way to Parys. There are only about 20nm between the edge of the Special Rules Area (7000ft southbound) and Parys, but we needed an even flight level – and for reasons best known to myself, I asked Info South for FL85 which meant that 2min after reaching, I was asking for descent. (It would have been more clever to ask for FL065
Crossing the Vaal into the Free State – FL085
Parys was busy with a Baron back taxiing and two gyros inbound. I performed a textbook unmanned join, with an extended downwind to allow the Baron to depart and landed with the two gyrocopters hot on my heels. Then we had a humorous moment where the only taxiway off the runway was blocked by an aircraft taxiing out – this required some negotiation but fortunately we are all nice folks…
Miss Daisy resting at temporary parking
Montgolfier’s Restaurant – Parys Airfield (FAPY)
There is always time for more photos….
The restaurant at Parys has recently been put under new management and is now called Montgolfier’s. It’s very relaxed, cool and comfortable with a great view of the temporary parking and runway. Food is reasonably priced and tasty, service is as quick as you’d expect for a leisurely Sunday breakfast – all in all a great experience.
Cessna C185 ZS-PHT
PA28-235 (Cherokee) – ZS-DVG
As we started up to head home, the gliders were being pulled out, so we weren’t too surprised that it was a little bumpy – nothing unmanageable of course, but the thermals were starting up. Back at BaraG we landed uneventfully again on RWY 13 (The Sling LOVES a rear CG for landing – #Wheeliesfordays!).
For a first time family trip, it was great – and the rear seat passengers remarked that they’d be prepared to spend more time back there..
I have been looking for an opportunity to take some family members flying in ZU-IBM. There is a heck of a lot going on at the moment with year end functions, prize-givings, concerts and the like and there simply isn’t a lot of time. When the Springs airport fly-in came up though we decided to make a morning of it. Some family members preferred their beds to an early flight so it was only myself and my son braving the trip to the East Rand.
I tend to overthink trips to unfamiliar airspace. I’ve only been east of OR Tambo Johannesburg International Airport (FAOR) once and that was a long way wide of the airspace doing my night Nav exercise – this route would call for a very close skirting of the airspace around this large international airport.
Undaunted though we planned to route from Tedderfield to Springs via Suikerbosrand Nature reserve (incidentally I have not been there since I was about 12y old) – I thought it would give me a chance to do some radial intercepts onto the HGV VOR using the “virtual VOR” feature on my MGL iEFIS – it creates radials based on the GPS position, so one can navigate using VORs without having a Nav radio per se (this will have to be fixed if I’m ever going to use this aircraft for IFR though)
Routing from Tedderfield to Springs giving the Buffer zone a wide berth
Saturday morning’s weather was fairly typical for a Saturday morning at this time of year – beautiful at 04h45, and overcast by 06h30. Fortunately the stuff was thin, was clearing from the east (good news since this was the direction of flight) and it looked like a good day to commit aviation.
Date
Aircraft
Route
Distance
Time(hrs)
Total(hrs)
24 November 2018
ZU-IBM (SLG4)
FATA – FASI
38nm
0.7
113.7
I try to involve my kids in the preflight process as I think that the more eyes there are scanning the aircraft, the greater the chance of picking up something – but we both had to stop and gawk as a flight of 4 motor gliders taxied past and departed to Springs – they’re quite elegant and looked like they had some pretty impressive initial climb performance.
In Cruise Selfie
Then it was time to set sail – in the video below one can see the smile on my son’s face as we accelerated down Runway 29. The routing was easier than I imagined it would be – and much quicker too – by road Springs is a good 90min drive – took us about 24min all told. Being total newbies to the fly-in scene we were impressed by the number of aircraft joining the pattern from all directions – generally professional piloting meant that we were able to build some good situational awareness and no surprises appeared (apart from the unexpectedly strong crosswind on the downwind leg)!
There is a bit of pressure landing at a busy field when you know everyone is watching your landing – fortunately we didn’t need a broom to taxi the aircraft off the runway so we retained some credibility. Which I lost for us by asking where we could park…. “Um… in any open spot?” So we pulled up next to a very pretty RV8 (ZU-RVA) and shut down.
Scott with IBM on the flight line at Springs – Check out that sexy RV8…
Then it was time to wander around and have a look at the aircraft – there was a good representation of general aviation in SA – everything from a Trike to a Cherokee 140, to C210 on the type certified side and lots of Vans Aircraft (Mostly RV7A’s with a spattering of RV-6/a’s and two RV-10’s – not to forget the aforementioned RV-8), A couple of Slings, Jabirus and some Kitfox aircraft on the NTCA side. A Robbie R44 and an Alo II kept the motor gliders company too.
ZS-CNY Cessna C210
Polaris LSA
“Sport” cruiser
Vans Aircraft RV-10 ZU-MTB
Citabria ZS-OZI
Sadly we were not taking part in the navigation rally and we didn’t have time to stay and watch the departing traffic so it was back to Tedderfield for us.
Date
Aircraft
Route
Distance
Time
Total
24 November 2018
ZU-IBM (SLG4)
FASI – FASY – FATA
55
1
114.7
We wanted to stay well clear of the busy corridor between springs and Rand Airport so I decided to head south until passing over Heidelberg airport and then route for Baragwanath (FASY) airport – which is to be the new home of ZU-IBM for a touch and go before returning to Tedderfield.
As we were doing run ups at the hold for RWY 03 at Springs there was some commotion on the airport frequency – apparently one of the motor gliders based at Springs had had an engine problem on departure from the grass runway and had completed a safe off field landing – I guess this is bread-and-butter stuff for glider pilots?
We had an uneventful trip back to Tedderfield- did one (average) touch and go at BaraG and then perhaps my best landing to date in the Sling at Tedderfield. I discovered an unexpected advantage of having my son with me – he could hop out and open the hangar, avoiding a shut down and hot start ! – Kids have their uses sometimes…
We’ll be looking for more fly-ins to attend in future.
