Of Float Planes and speed boats

Awakening on one very still, breeze less morning, a trio of intrepid float plane owners decided to hit the water.
Dan Du Toit, Willem Hoek and myself made a run for Sandvlei expecting to have a fantastic time on the glassy estuary.

Willem has just finished scratch building a truly beautiful Savoia Marchetti S65.
A plane that in real life was designed for the Schneider Cup races

Many, many hours of labour have gone into this push-pull system two-motored sea plane.
Bravely Willem stood up to the plate for his maiden flight. Powered up and taxied out across the still water.
Big breaths followed and in the calmest manner possible Willem hit the power.
Full of gusto the Marchetti raced along the lake… and then raced some more… and once finished with that,
it raced on a wee bit more… never to leave the water.
“Nice speed boat” was the quip from the sidelines.

Much umming and aahing later about power ratios, float steps, ect it was decided that
I would take up the cudgel and beat the lake to death with the Machhi M67 that I had scratch built
and flown a few good times before.

So we knew this one worked!
Equally full of gusto the Macchi M67 raced along the lake… and then raced some more…
and once finished with that it raced on a wee bit more… never to leave the water.
“Nice speed boat” was the quip from the sidelines.
Now with egg on my face and looking for excuses, I started to blame the water. As for Dan,
he stepped up with his yellow monster plane, ridiculously overpowered, and simply dragged
it out of the water by the prop, did a few good low fly byes and landed.
By this point we had begun to come to terms with the fact that the smooth conditions
were seriously screwing with our ability to get off the water. The sheer surface tension of a glassy water surface
is remarkable and needs to be respected.
I have had some great suggestions for remedies from the Durban guys and hope to try them out soon.
In the meantime, Willem has been out with the Savoia seaplane on subsequent occasions,
with some wind and ripple on the water, and has had many a good flight with the Savoia
getting out of the water in a very short run up.
And so the learning curve continues….

Golden evening slope soaring session at Chapmans Peak

Feels like you just stole some time away from school… bunking out from the standard daylight hour routine. Refreshing, revitalising and reinventing your head space and getting the weekend off to about the best start possible… just a few hours early.

Sort of like… Friday afternoon, on Chapman’s Peak at 3PM, in the middle of a light to awesome North Westerly blow. Sunset was at 7PM and the guys didn’t leave the slope till 7PM. 8 souls standing in the afternoon glow just having a blast with one of the best backdrops to any slope site anywhere.

Roll on the winter and those awesome winter evening sessions at a slope just up the road.

there is a glider there somewhere

Late Friday evening sunset scene

Pye, our constant friend on the slope… watching the planes… I promise, He does

Sloping at it’s best

The Cape Town area offers a lot of really great slopes, but it’s really hard to beat an early morning slope soaring session up at Red Hill overlooking Simonstown on a Spring fresh South Easter.

Brendan Nielsen twiddling the springs while his Toucan does the honours.

Background vista compliments of mother nature

Beat that!