Club History

Swindon Gliding Club, being the nearest Club to South Cerney, is of course, very much looking forward to the World Gliding Championships. The Club and members are anxious to help and assist in any way they can any visitors. who care to visit our South Marston home drome during this period. We shall be organizing passenger glider flights during the World Championship, and we also expect to be flying every day at South Marston as well as acting .as the host field for aero’ planes coming in from everywhere. Club achievements since last communication – Geoff. Turner attained a Silver C height in the new syndicate Skylark 4, Margaret Young got her C and we expect our Olympia back any day now after C of A.

The AG.M. has just taken place and the committee for 1965 is to be small and streamlined. The following have been elected as officers: Chairman, L Colquhoun; Secretary, G. Turner; Treasurer, R. Clark: Ground Engineer, D. Rawling; Social Secretary, J. Young; Aircraft Engineer, R. Maxfield. A special vote of thanks goes together with our grateful appreciation to our past Secretary, Miss B. Sanders. She has done us proud since we started, and has been our Secretary for five years. We wish her well, and hope to see more of her on the field in ’65. It is hoped that we shall soon have the use of a new Blanik which should be here by January. One of our new members, Chris Day, has acquired one of these machines and is allowing the Club to use it. as an advanced trainer. The total fleet for 1965 will now consist of a T-21, Swallow, Olympia, Blanik, Skylark 4 and a Grunau. I now end by introducing Peter Clifford who will be your scribe for the coming year. 

Members redecorated the Clubhouse during the winter and the new entrance means we no longer have to go through the workshop. Phil Martin has gained his Bronze C and a K-18 has replaced our elderly K-8 and Skylark 4.

Down in Wiltshire nothing very much has stirred, other than our several successful film shows; special thanks due here to Our hard-working projectionist and his crew, also to those who organised the Christmas and Twelfth Night parties. The winch, which was mentioned in our previous newsletter, has now been tried out and proved a success. This will be a great asset when using the local ridge, which until now could only be reached by aerotow. The club fleet has been improved by the addition of a Skylark 4, which we hope will be put to good use in the coming season.

With four Silver duration flights completed already this season, we are off to a very good start. These have been achieved by David Hart, Peter Trenchard, Graham Hinder and John Bundy. The last three of these were all local soaring flights, while the first Was flown at Portmoak, where David also reached 10,000 ft. in wave. The elusive South Marston wave has also been flown at last. After all the talk by our wave “experts” it took one of our younger members to fly it to almost 7,000 ft. In March we held our ninth annual Dinner and Dance, where we welcomed our new President, Charles Morrison M.P., who, in spite of art arduous evening arrived at the airfield for his introduction to gliding the next morning. We are interested in the possibility of using diesel tow vehicles and we would appreciate information from any other clubs who are operating them.

Our Tenth Annual Dinner and Dance, at which the guest speaker was the Mavor of Swindon, Alderman Bown was held at Blunsdon House Hotel during February. The Club trophies were presented by the Mayoress. Many thanks are extended to our Social Secretary, Christine Day, and to her willing helpers for a most enjoyable evening. Since our previous report we have acquired a new Chairman, Dr. David Hart, who has tackled the job with great energy and enthusiasm and we wish him a happy term of office. The season got away to a good start with lots of soaring during the Easter weekend. Our T-21 has been replaced with an ASK-I3, which has proved to be very popular, and the rest of the club fleet consists now of a Swallow, Olympia and Skylark 4. Two new syndicates have been formed recently. Gordon Gulliver, our Secretary, and Graham Hinder now own a Ka-6, and Bernie Keogh and John Bundy have a Ka-6E. We wish Bernie much success in competition flying this year.

Since our last club news, we have had a very eventful time. One Saturday Harry Daniels and Tug Wilson, flying a Blanik, set a new UK record for the 10Q km. triangle fur a two-seater, South Marston. Shipton Under Wychwood-Aston Down-8outh Marston, travelling 104 km. in 1 hr 10 mins. at an average speed of 77 km/h. The following day, leaving South Marston and flying via Long Marsdon and Halton, they accomplished yet another feat by also setting a UK record for the 200 km. triangle – 214 km. in 3 hrs. 25 mms. at an average speed of 62.5 km/h. Back in 1966, Harry and Tug gained the 300 km. record, so here at South Marston we are all feeling very proud of them indeed. Our recent Flying Week has brought a good number of individual achievements – the most notable being a Diamond goal and Gold distance triangle; this was South Marston-Kidderminster- Bognor Regis-South Marston, flown in 6t hours by Peter Trenchard. Christine Day flew to Booker to complete her Silver C and also collected the return trophy. Congratulations, Chris our first lady Silver C. Sally Hargrave and Ian Powdrill, both of whom are sixteen and our youngest solo pilots, also gained their Cs on their first solo flights, Bill Foddy and Ralph Childs gained Cs on solo flights, Dave Elliott achieved his A and B, John Trenchard completed his Bronze after converting to the Skylark 3 and Mike Clarke – who soloed recently – completed a Bronze leg. Successful conversions during the Week were Sue Harbour to Olympia and Rex Collins and Henry Devonshire to Skylark 4. The Club played host some weeks ago to the then Mayor and Mayoress of Swindon and the Mayor and Mayoress elect. Unfortunately, the weather was not good but the Mayor very sportingly elected to fly and was launched to 2,000 ft., piloted by George Turner our CFl and acro-towed by Fred Butcher in the Terrier. Both glider and tug disappeared very quickly into the murk. The tug soon returned but, after an anxious 45 minutes and still no sign of the Ka-13. Fred set off to comb the countryside and there they were, sitting calmly in a field some four miles away. 12 The Mayor’s face was wreathed in smiles and apparently, he had thoroughly enjoyed his first flight in a glider. The weather improved slightly after this and the rest of the party had their flights and were given tea and refreshments in e Clubhouse where, by now, several members of the Press had arrived to take photographs and notes, so that the events were duly recorded in our local paper the following day.

Our dinner and dance went off with its usual finesse with more people than ever attending. The raffle was a great success, in spite of the fact that the CFI, tug pilot and chairman’s daughter-in-law tool! the first three prizes. Some merriment occurred during the flying achievements awards. A special award for the most publicised” flight was made to Bernie Keogh for landing at the Duke of Bedford’s estate rather close to the animals. We have had a poor start to the year because of the weather. Our launch rate so far is down on last year, but we hope that our two “flying weeks” and a really old-fashioned summer (with sun and not just warm rain) will put this right. Bob Cunningham and a friend of his brought their SHK from Keevil (their runway was being re-surfaced) and spent two enjoyable weekends with us. Bob brought his dog on the second visit. It was a Great Dane, with the emphasis on great, and proceeded to eat my lunch. Bob commented On how friendly we all were and how willing we were to rig the SHK (little did he know we wanted to fly it ourselves). On behalf of the club, I would like to say a heart-felt thank you to our retiring tow car syndicate, David and Eric for all the time and effort they have put in the job. The new team Alec and Godfrey are fired with enthusiasm, and have already ripped out, repaired and replaced the engine of the Yellow Peril inside one morning.

Having fully recovered from our Hippie party, our flying is now back to normal with “DoDa” landing on the front lawn of Woburn Abbey, and so emulating Bernie Keogh’s effort last year! Our friendship with Watchfield was cemented at a recent “Orgy” (return match for our Hippie thing! ) Swindon and Watchfield. Gliding Clubs challenge allcomers to beat them at bottle walking. We had Bob Cunningham visiting again (if this keeps up, he will have to become a member!). He was first observed by Bob Lucksford who had been in contact with an SHK for several minutes and having given him careful instructions on where to land, he discovered Bob Cunningham had no radio, and therefore apologises to the pilot We talked into landing …wherever it was! D. Trenchard completed his Silver C and. D. Laurence and M. Dugmore their Silver heights. Miles Dugmore did his five hours in the Swallow at the same time, winning the bottle of champagne kindly donated by Eric Winning. Richard Cole obtained his assistant instructor rating at Bicester.

After many months’ absence from these columns, here is a short account of our activities. Launch is by Specialist built diesel tow cars cared for by two Willing members, David Huband and Alec Thompson, who act as launch contractors to the club. This system works Well and relieves members of tow car maintenance. Aero-tows are however coming into their own. We have a visiting Auster and a club-based tug owned by David Schofield which offers aero-towing on a full-time basis. The club fleet consists of a Capstan, a K-I3, a Swallow and a Skylark 4 with private owners much in evidence. At our dinner-dance cups were awarded by our new chairman, Fred Butcher (the Flying Farmer) as follows: the Whitbread trophy for the flight of the year-Eric Winning for a gain of height of 13,000ft; the Return trophy for a 170km out-and-return-David Schofield and the Dayson trophy went to Christine Day for her seven-hour epic flight around the Cotswolds. The Cadet cup for best progress was awarded earlier to Gay Gilchrist who was visiting from the States. This year we have at last realised the potential of local wave in the lee of the Cotswolds and to prove a point the club fleet headed by Alan Chester sat for most of one afternoon at 7,000ft. Jonn Trenchard continues as CFI and Ray Nicholas as his deputy. The weekend catering staff headed by Jean and John Wright are providing consistently hot food most of the time. Len Morris keeps the fleet airworthy.