Flying T21 again

It’s been a long time, but I finally made it back to the cockpit of Slingsby T21.

The first, and the only flight I did in T21, was on 19th April 2014 with my instructor John Henry (John deserves a full post, but that’s for another time). As I check my logbook, it says the flight was 10 minutes long, so we definitely managed some soaring. I am pretty sure the wind was easterly, so the ridge was not working at Portmoak. It’s not the best photo, but it’s the only one I have of the flight.

On a side note, this was likely one of my favourite flying days: glide in T21 in the morning, then according to my logbook, I had a spinning exercise in the afternoon with Chris Robinson.

I remember that flight very well. We took aerotow in DG 505 to 4000ft. The flight was 26 minutes long and we had a dozen of spins both to the left and right. Although I found DG to be quite slippery and picking up speed very quickly, I managed to keep the recovery speed around 80kts. Not too bad for a first time. This is when the idea to do aerobatics came to my mind…

Back to the main topic though. I have been meaning to fly T21 again for a long time and coming back to gliding after 10 years break, I thought it was about time.

The opportunity came during last weekend. Courtesy of fine folks at Portmoak Heritage Collection, I was allowed to rejoin the Collection and fly T21 again. The weekend proved to be tricky for me to get to the airfield due to family commitments, but I finally managed on Sunday afternoon. And here she was, waiting in the queue for winch launch.

As you can see from the placecard, the limits are max winch speed of 55kts and Vne of 92kts. Notice that for solo flying you need a ballast of 46lb. Let’s not get ahead of ourselves though. I had a pleasure of flying with Matt Strickland on this occasion.

So let’s jump into the cockpit and see how it feels.

We managed 38 minutes ridge soaring flight on Bishop Hill. We got few feet shy of 2000ft AGL. The conditions were a bit gusty, but overall pretty good experience. I know I am still rusty, but if that was my worst flight then I’ll take it!

And if you ask if I have any pictures from the flight itself, I don’t - I was busy flying. The trim is almost of no use so have to fly her with constant load on the stick.

Thanks to Matt Strickland for a great flight!