It was a spur of the moment thing, but I'm glad we were able to fly. Stef is over from his native Adelaide, stopping in on the way to Melbourne. He arrived in the afternoon, and I was just thinking how good it would be to go for a fly when Manny sms'd me to say he was going for a late afternoon go in the Jabiru.
He also had some admin to do, so I asked if I could take Stefan up for some quick circuits while he completed his work. Thankfully, Manny agreed and we quickly jumped in the car and were off to the airport.
I completed the daily inspection of the aircraft, all the while talking Stef through what I was doing and how the various systems of the aircraft operated. Stef, although not having been in a light aircraft before, is mechanically minded and picked everything up very quickly. He can often be found improving and modding his car, etc.
He was most impressed that out of this comparatively small engine pulls the aircraft along at close to 200 kilometres per hour! His eyes lit up when on downwind I pointed to the GPS, which was showing a ground speed of 107 knots!
We did three circuits. The wind was favouring runway 18, and even though it was only 5 to 7 knots, it was moving around quite a bit. This caused a bit of extra work during the latter stages of the hold off, but nothing that a tiny but of extra speed and reducing the flap a little couldn't fix!
It was a nice moment, because Stef's Mum (my Aunt Jude) was the one who gave me her books after she was finished using them for her pilot licence studies!
Stef took some video, so I'll post it when he's done editing and uploading it...
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