Gliding again

Here's the P1 (first pilot) who took me up for a flight yesterday. Many thanks to him too for organising the reunion. People were already there when I arrived around lunch time. We signed the insurance forms and put our names on the list for a guest flight.

Take off

Circuit and landing

Some of us had forgotten how cold it gets on an airfield, and shivered in too flimsy scarves and cloaks.

At four o'clock we gathered together in the Brown Elephant.

Our erst-while chairman gave us a short history of the club. Its original aims were:

• to make gliding accessible, affordable and enjoyable for people who might not otherwise take part
• a "self help" organisation
• to encourage an interest in glider engineering and flying

There were also heaps of albums and photos around, including the newspaper one of the K14 after an early solo pilot didn't make it back to airfield, was too low for Queens Parade, tried to land in a street, and ended up climbing from his cockpit through a bathroom window.


There was a super slide show too. So after the talk we stood and looked and reminisced for a while before repairing to our old Lasham haunt: the bar.

Gliding

Today is the Royal Aircraft Establishment Gliding Club reunion.

I used to glide a few moons ago. It is good to go to a reunion and meet old pilots, some still flying. I liked this photo we took at the interuniversity gliding competition. I was going to send it to the Open University Sesame magazine , but I never got round to it.

The glider is my Skylark 4, which I shared in a syndicate with three others. I've scanned and uploaded some other old gliding photos to my flickr site here. I have added photos from the Hobbits party because there's a lot of glider pilots at that party. See here.