Welcome to Oliver who has joined the Vale of White Horse Gliding Centre as a junior member recently. He was flying at the weekend, along with some other recent joiners, and also learning ground handling skills, and operating the retrieve vehicles.

Junior members can go solo from 14 years old, provided they have demonstrated the skills and judgement to do so. We actively manage their training through to solo within a BGA-approved training programme, which is then followed by a careful programme of adding experience for them as early solo pilots, to prepare them to fly more advanced, higher-performance gliders in due course.

As well as flight training, juniors can carry out all ground operations at the club, including managing the launch point, driving the retrieve vehicles, and preparing and handling the gliders, under the guidance of our duty instructor or duty pilot who are always present at the launch point to provide guidance and keep everything operating well and safely.

We’ve got an active junior gliding group at the the club, with several young pilots going solo earlier this year, and one completing their silver C badge. If you’re a potential junior pilot and are interested to join our juniors group at VoWHGC, speak to your parent or guardian, and have them contact us using our contact form on the website. Then we can arrange for you to visit the airfield, see how we operate, and chat to some other members, so you can decide whether you’d like to join the club. We’d be delighted to have you join us!