35 SA Flyer Magazinepre-takeoff ritual, which in a Cub is almost
nothing – we lined up and set sail.
Now, at just under 3,000 ft, with two
up and a full tank, a Cub is not a ball of
fire. We trundle and rumble and slowly the
tail comes up and then there is a lot more
trundling. After perhaps half a kilometre
of this, I begin to take an interest in the
proceedings.
The revs are fine but the airspeed is
very lazy. Hell, we only need 45 mph to get
into the air, but it’s certainly taking its time
to get there today. I glance at the windsock
and am appalled to see it is standing out
in the way we are going. We have perhaps
15 kt on the tail. But we still have at least
another kilometre of runway so I sit and
watch.
We eventually wallow into the air.
It takes me a moment to realise what’s
happened. We have left the world of a
bracing Karoo morning, with ice in the
windmills’ water-tanks, and entered the
oven of a berg wind.
Okay, so now I know what’s going on ...
but the full significance of it only penetrates
my skull a little while later.
I watch while the pupe steers towards
Willowmore, using a wobbly little whisky
compass. Once I am comfortable that we
are going the right way, I settle into Zane
Grey.
I get to about page two when I see a
tiny village almost zoom past on our left.
Something is very wrong. Nothing
ever zooms in a Cub. This wonderful little
aeroplane makes continental drift look
exciting.
I haul my battered, and now sweat
stained, map out of my shirt front and soon
realise that the surprise village is Rietbron.
It should have put in an appearance
exactly 40 minutes after takeoff. But there
it is – a quarter-of-an-hour early. I grab the
pupe’s whirly wheel out of his astonished
hands, twiddle it and look in horror at the
60-minute pointer.
We have a groundspeed of 113 mph
and an airspeed of about 70 – giving us a
tailwind of 43 mph.
“I’ve got her,” I yell and stand the Cub
on its ear for a 180 to head for home.
“What’s going on?” My pupe is not
only amazed – he is downright pissed off.
Testing Officers are not meant to grab the
controls unless death seems close.
“Just hold her heading back to Beaufort
West. It is going to take us an hour and
three quarters to get there – if we don’t run
out of fuel first.”
I will keep the story short – we got
hurled all over the sky in the turbulence,
and came a bad second to a VW Combi,
which was also battling the wind, and
trailing a stream of dust on a dirt road
below us. In fact, we found it slow going to
overtake a guy on a bike. Our groundspeed
was just 27 mph.
We didn’t quite make it back to the
airfield, we ran out of fuel on short final for
the northerly runway and landed amongst
boulders – but it didn’t really matter
because we had no forward speed when we
touched down.
Fortunately, we were spotted by the
other pupes who rushed out, and together
we all manhandled the little aeroplane back
to a hangar.Out of interest, I heard at the time
that the village of Rietbron was for sale,
complete with church, pub, café and a few
houses. It may still be, for all I know.
So that was two landings amongst the
stones within a few days of each other. The
first was my fault for not briefing better. And
I was equally to blame for the second. A
Met report didn’t really seem necessary for
a short flight on such a nice day.
I guess experience is the thing that
keeps you out of trouble – but you need to
get into trouble to gain experience. Nobody
said the life of a pilot was going to be easy!columns
Beaufort West
Rietbron
Willowmore
Klaarstroom
ABOVE - Beaufort West cross-country route
should have taken three hours in the Cub.j