Volume 16 No 1 Feb 1965.pdf - Lakes Gliding Club

RHODESIA'S FIRST 500 KILOMETERSBy E.IP. HODGECAME out to Rhodesia in 1962 afterlearning to fly with the Kent GlidingClub, and since being here I nave reallyenjoyed good soaring conditions for achange. If you d"o not stay up for anhour at least every time you fly, youfeel very hard done by. Out of the 52week-ends in the year, 50 are soarable.Last year, in an Olympia, I managedto get m.y Gold C and Diamond forGoal with a flight out-and-return toUmniati-312 km.'Early this year four of us formed asyndicate and bOught a Ka-6 from TirnBiggs of Johannesburg, and up to thestart of the Central African GlidingChampionships, held in Salisbury, noneof us had done any cross-country flightsin this machine, mainly due to gettingthe trailer fixed, etc.Alf Thompson and I were flying theKa-6 ,in the competitions, and both of uswere pleasantly surprised how well itgoes for an aircraft that doesn't lookmuch better than an Olympia.On Thursday. J5th October, 1964, thetask set at the Championship was a freedistance around optical turning points ofEnkledoorn, Chatswortb and a declaredturning point of Fort Victoria AfricanTownship giving a 500.8 km. out-andreturn.I had been trying very haJld to get500 km. set as a task, .and today I hadmy way. The weather didn't look toopromising with a str'ong 15-kt. southerlywind; our hope was that the wind woulddrop towards the afternoon as it usuallydoes. Luckily enough, that's what happened.I was first in line for take-off, and at10.15 a.m. John Colban, flying the Tiger,dropped me off in a nice thermal atJ,300 ft. over the strip. Lift wasn't verystrong, 1-2 metres, but the strong windwas drifting me nicely on track. At, 3,000ft. lift faded out and I set course. Towardsthe south, Cu was beginning toform very nicely, and as I went along,t~ermals were getting stranger andhIgher all the time; some 40 miles out,lift Was 3-4 metres up 10 6,000 ft.At Enkledoorn, 90 miles out, all theclOUds ended-nothing Qut blue skyahead; it didn't look ver)' nice at all. Atthis point, between Enkledoorn andChatsw0rth, you have to leave the mainroad and cut across country: not a niceplace to have to land-hardly any farms.just bush and 6 ft. high ant-hills.Heading into the blue, my spirits sanklower as the Ka-6 sank lower. 3,500 ft.and still nothing; 3,200 ft. and up goesthe varjo I metre. Really winding theKa-6 round to stay in it,. I am slowlygaining height. The higher I ge the betterit is-4 metres showing now. 8,000 ft.,9,000 ft. and still gojng up. 9,500 ft. andthe lift gets turbulent; I am a1 the top.Further south, little wispy clouds arebeginning to fonn--one every five milesor so. Under these I found strong liftand only under them, It was a waste oftime looking anywhere else. By now,my operating height was between 11,000ft. and 7,000 ft.-that is, 16,000 ft. abovesea level, and I cannot say that I noticedany effects from lack of oxygen.It had certainly turned out to be alovely day. Over Fort Victoria alJd withmy turning·point photographs taken at1.45 p.m., I turned homewards-height10,000 ft. 1 was feeling on top of theworld.Ten miles out from Fort Victoria Isaw Jimmy Arnott in the Vasama thermailingbelow me, and J called him upon the radio and we wished each otherthe best of luck. Jimmy had not yet beenaround the turning point.1 was determined to keep as high aspossible, and deviated off course to gounder each cloud because I was approachingthe blue stretch of sky betweenChatsworth and t::nkledoorn. Inthe distance I could see plenty of cloudover Enkledoorn and it ·was there that Icame to my first thermal under cloudsince Chatsworth; it wasn't very strong,and the nearer I went to cloud base thestronger it became. At 4,500 ft. it wastwo metres, and near cloud base fourto five metres; 5/8 Cu had formed alongthis stretch at 8,500 ft. Staying as highas possible, I took lift under every cloud,never getting below 6,000 ft.From Enkledoorn I called up base andgot through perfectly-90 miles range on43