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Page 5

 > A flight into wind

The wind was blowing about 10 mph today and I decided to wait till later until it began to smooth out. It didn't. It got even stronger and by the time it got to about 6pm it was blowing around 15 mph. I decided to go for it and get a flight in.

The takeoff was pretty bumpy but that didn't cause any problem. I was climbing but not making much forward progress. At about 1,000 ft I pulled the bar in all the way and headed into the northerly wind. I flew about 4 miles up wind gaining another 2,000 ft on the way. At this point I headed east out to the town of Lewes where the lights were starting to come on. It was getting dark. I decided to head back to the takeoff field. This time I was pretty much down wind and I was really racing along with a ground speed of around 40 mph.

I had to burn off the height to get down to the landing and I cut the engine back to tickover and pulled on some slipping turns. I kept the engine running just in case I undershot the landing place until I was around 50 ft above the field. The landing was easy.

When I landed I looked at the fuel tank and realised that I'd used about half of the tank, about 2.5 litres. That surprised me given that I'd only flown for about 1/2 an hour. The reason I'd used so much was that I was flying on full power for most of the flight.

The lesson from this flight is that flying into wind is just not a good idea. You don't cover much ground and you use a hell of a lot of fuel.

 > more into wind flying

Another flight at the end of the day. This field wasn't my choice, it was Keith's field in Essex. Of all the flat fields in this flat county, this field was slightly sloping and surrounded by trees. I wouldn't have chosen it but I decided to let Keith fly out of it first on his doodlebug. He got some flak off the top of trees as he crossed them and for a minute I thought he was going to stall as he pitched up. He sorted it out and I followed him into the sky.

He chose to fly into wind so I followed him. Again, the same as flight no.5, it was a struggle to make any progress. We covered about 3.5 miles slowly and then I decided to go across wind. I flew across wind for a couple of miles and then headed down wind back towards the takeoff field. Again, I covered ground a lot quicker and this was far more satisfying.

When I checked the tank, I'd used about 1/3 of the fuel. So again, the lesson is, don't fly into wind, it's just not worth it.

> Flight from Glynde to Brighton via the coast

I was teaching today but I only had two students so they wore themselves out pretty quickly and that left me some time to fly my wasp/K4. I had a problem starting it though and at one point I thought I was going to have to have to de-rig. It kicked in eventually though and I took off from a gentle down slope in a 3-4 mph breeze and climbed pretty quickly to around 500 ft.

I decided to annoy the other instructor at the HG school and fly over the shop just as they were packing their stuff away for the day. I was flying and he wasn't. I know how that feels. It was good to be on the right side of that little scene.

Before heading for the coast I made a pass over Mt Caburn and had a look down into the quarry at the east side of it. I've heard it said that witches use it for rituals. It looked pretty eerie to me.

I headed south for the coast and climbed to 1,600 ft. I got to the ferry terminal at Newhaven and turned east following the beach all the way to Seaford cliffs, about 3 miles away. I've always wanted to soar these cliffs but here I was, 1,600 ft above them. This was better. The visibility was really good today and I could see right along the coast in both directions. I thought about going further east but decided to turn back and head west for Brighton.

As I was flying back over Seaford beach I decided to burn off some height and by the time I got to the part where there are no houses, just beach for about a mile, I got down to about 30 ft above the waves. I know this is not strictly legal but what the hell. There was nobody beneath me and it was a great feeling to be able to fly low without having to worry about landing. When I reached the port of Newhaven again I climbed to a sensible altitude and carried on along the coast, following the cliffs but a few hundred yards out over the sea.

At Telscombe cliffs I took a turn inland and headed up over the Downs and round the back of Woodingdean to finally land at the top of Sheepcote valley. It was a nice flight with great views.

Total distance covered was 25 miles. I reckon I used about 3 litres of fuel so I'm guessing that on average I'm burning a litre for every 8 miles. I don't know if I can better that without using thermals. That was using the engine for the whole flight and flying at cruise, which is about 5,600 revs, for most of it.

N.B. I called Chris at wasp sytems to ask him what he thought the starting problem could be. He figure that if I took the carburettor apart and cleaned out the needle and jet, that should solve it. I did that and it seems to have done the trick. It's good to be able to call the manufacturer and get some advice straight away. I'm not sure you could do that with a certain Swedish model. Naming no names.

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