At the end of a row of hangers known colloquially as ‘Millionaires Row’ were stored the gliders ‘Delta Mike’ and ‘Foxtrot One’ Roddy’s too but I can’t remember it’s competition number.
It was in this hanger that we ensconced ourselves to do the scoring for the Gauteng Regional Gliding competition. Here we set up two desktops with scoring software in order to download the GPS traces from the ‘black boxes’ carried by all the entrants.
Taffy was competition director on this occasion, handling the fleet and recorded start and finish times in the time honoured way using his trusty wristwatch.
By this time we’d come a long way in the use of purpose built software since the day’s of using spreadsheets to calculate results from either evidence of on site developed black and white photo’s to check that gliders had rounded the requisite turn points or the new GPS traces. The first time I was exposed to the scoring algorithm embedded within spreadsheet formulae was totally mystifying to me. It is by far the most complicated method of calculating the result of any sport dependant on weather conditions, number of returning gliders, distances flown and handicapping.
Jan Kempdorp may well have been the geometric centre of the country with a massive 50 metre wide military runway but the agricultural college dormitories within which we stayed on that occasion also supported squadron’s of the most aggressive mosquitoes on the planet. The humid heat of the Orange river valley was oppressive in the extreme with us having to sleep under soaking wet towels to keep cool.
Back at Orient after 14 days of competition flying I was rewarded with a ride in ‘Charlie Alpha’. This aircraft was a Schempp-Hirth Nimbus 4DM, self launching with a pop-up motor and prop buried in the fuselage behind the twin tandem cockpit. It’s wingspan was 73 percent that of a 737 Boeing and flew like a homesick angel.
We first of all headed north in the direction of Sun City. When we got to the Magaliesberg ridge we encountered wave. We surfed the wave up and down a few times gaining height. I was given control in the wave for the first time by the world speed record holder over a 1000 km triangular course. Feeling disoriented by the handling of such a large wingspan in the turns with so much adverse yaw and me not applying enough rudder in time Helmuth soon took back control of his aircraft.
Looking south was a spectacular rapidly maturing cumulus boiling into a cumulonimbus. The wave had allowed us to get above cloud base and this cauliflower bubbling cloud reflected back brilliantly white. Round about us the weather was closing in with rapidly developing thunderstorms.
Over Rustenberg we turned back towards the airfield. Looking west about halfway back we spied a shaft of light between the storm clouds. At the last minute we turned into this gap. Lightning flashed down to the earth exploding in trees either side of us causing us to believe that we were gods somehow responsible for this awesome power.
A little rain streaked back over the canopy in long rivulets as we applied full negative flap to avoid the associated sink. She rapidly accelerated towards 300km/h and in no time had punched through the clouds.
Looking west the cloud base stepped up like a stairway to heaven in streets laid out before us. We turned seldom in lift and dolphined our way from cloud to cloud, slowing down in lift and speeding up in sink using the flaps to control speed. This machine was magical and soon we spiralled over Zeerust at 13 000 ft.
In front of me on the instrument binnacle sat a white teddy bear mascot with a Christmas hat which I’ve never seen out of the aircraft.
The final glide home was unbelievable with this aircraft being so ground shy. We experimented with the theory that clouds could induce local wave and tried to find it. Sometimes punching through holes with both wings lost to site with tendrils of rolling cloud enveloping us before spitting us out the other side.
We needed to orbit the gliding club three times before losing sufficient height to land. On landing my handheld Garmin 12XL had recorded a flight of 750km, the longest I’ve ever flown in an unpowered aircraft, not bad for an afternoon’s jaunt.
Don’t think those that had rewarded me this flight ever knew how much this was appreciated.
Mangled Neuron 