Glider Aerobatics Training

[Lurchio]

I'm looking for some training for glider aeros and the BGA site is pretty useless as every link to the different clubs don't mention aeros training and emailing them is becoming tiring!

Does anyone belong to a club that offers glider aerobatic training by a BGA Aerobatics Instructor and can recommend them?

Thanks

[cats_five]

I believe Lasham does but it's a long way away from Lancs! If you look on the following page you will find a glider rep who might be able to advise:

BAeA Officers and committee members (http://www.aerobatics.org.uk/officers.htm#Glider)

[Pegpilot]

Hi Lurch

Try Buckminster GC at Saltby, near Grantham - they specialise in that kind of thing

Cheers

Peg

[Lurchio]

Thanks i shall give them a try

[ProfChrisReed]

Saltby (Lincs) runs an annual aerobatics comp and, I think, provides training (certainly did a couple of years back). Still some way from you though.

I would expect there to be an aerobatics instructor at Derby & Lancs (Camphill) because it's a big club. Email the club secretary via their website.

Bowland Forest is also near you, but I've never visited. But you never know.

If you're prepared to travel into bandit country, I'm almost certain there's an aeros instructor at Sutton Bank (Yorkshire!).

[Edited for afterthought: If you go to Gliderpilot.net (Glider Pilot Network > uk.rec.aviation.soaring (http://uras.gliderpilot.net/)) and ask there you will quickly get an answer]

[Lurchio]

Haha hmmmm Yorkshire??? Just not cricket going there!

[overun]

London Gliding Club in Dunstable ran courses and l believe were the tops in that field a little while ago. Give them a call, ask for Ray Stoward. Good luck.
p.s. if you did it now you`d probably get through to the bar and a wealth of info !

[B4aeros]

There's a whole section on aerobatics on the BGA website:
British Gliding Association >> Info for Club & Members >> Aerobatics >> Clubs (http://www.gliding.co.uk/bgainfo/aerobatics/clubs.htm)

The clubs listed are the ones that we know about and/or replied to a BGA 'get your club listed' circular. I think Shenington could be added to that list.

The link to the BAeA proficiency scheme should be:
Pilot Proficiency Scheme (http://www.aerobatics.org.uk/pilot_proficiency.htm)

Plenty of clubs have instructors who can show you the basics. Currently, instructors don't need an official rating to teach positive G figures, so any half cat. can teach loops & wingovers if they have their CFI's permission.

AFAIK, only Booker, Bristol & Glos, Lasham, London, Southdown & (possibly) Buckminster have resident BGA rated aerobatic instructors. I think Windrushers (Bicester) do aerobatic days with a visiting instructor & the Saltby-based Fox. The other clubs listed on the BGA site have instructors who will be able to teach you to fly all the Sports level (+G) figures to a high standard.

[BackPacker]

The other avenue you might want to pursue is via Jen Buckenham at the BAeA. She might not be able to answer your question straight away, but she might be able to point you in the right direction.

[Ian.Ellis]

Try cambridge Gliding Club at Gransden Lodge.

[ChrisJ800]

I was taught some aerobatics at Dunstable back in the 80's - loops, some sustained inverted, chandelles and low beat ups.

[snapper1]

Derby & Lancs at Camphill dont have an aerobatics instructor. We would go to Saltby.

[overun]

ChrisJ800. l feel you are mistaken Sir.

l lived and worked on site for several years during the 80`s as a professional instructor, and l can assure you that at no time was a high beat up demonstrated to any of the pupils.

The key word is "demonstrated".

[JW411]

The finest glider aerobatic pilot that I ever knew was Doug Bridson. He was the only truly natural pilot that I ever met in my (so far) 55 years of aviation.

He had the prototype Skylark 2 specially modified for inverted flight etc and I can remember reading an article in the Flight magazine back in the 1960s which reported on the aerobatic championships held at Dunstable. It said something like this:

"The most spirited display was undoubtedly that of Flt Lt Bridson in his Skylark 2 who was unfortunately disqualified when he put all of the judges on their knees in the mud during his inverted beat-up".

He did a display at the Battle of Britain display at Benson in the Chilterns GC Bocian. He followed four Lightnings in the programme and the contrast from all that thrust and reheat to a silent aerobatic display was a difficult act to follow.

The applause from the crowd would have overwhelmed the noise of the Lightnings.

Just before we launched Doug, the Station Commander came out of the VIP tent and told me that "Bomber Harris" was fond of gliders and it would be nice if Doug could finish his display close to the VIP tent so that they could speak.

Doug landed without use of wheel or air brake and taxiied up to the VIP tent and dropped the wingtip over the white rope fence and deposited it in Bomber Harris's lap!

That is what I call style.

Incidentally, Doug was also "quite good" at flying Lightnings.

[overun]

Someone on another thread suggested that commercial pilots should be welcomed, for their different point of view, into gliding clubs.

A little like having the house rewired and then telling the electrician which switch to operate :)

[cats_five]

I know a number of commercial pilots in various gliding clubs. Some of them are instructors, some are XC fanatics, some are both. Some are still working, some are retired. As a group they don't seem to bring a substantially different view of gliding though. What was the PoV you were hoping they would bring?

[snapper1]

Quite agree. Weve had a number of current and ex airline pilots join our ranks to learn gliding and soaring. Its great fun watching their first attempts at rounding out after years of landing 747s!

[cats_five]

...
Its great fun watching their first attempts at rounding out after years of landing 747s!

It's great fun watching visitors rounding out and then finding they've picked a bumpy bit of our airfield!

[overun]

Should l do this gently ?

Or just clump about ? :) Sorry ladies and gentlemen, l`ll go gently.

How many members of the national squad over the last 30 years have not been professional pilots one may wonder, and one may wonder also as to what the powers that be would have done with uk airspace if it wasn`t for the input of professional pilots who were soaring pilots first and foremost.
Cats-five they don`t seem to bring a substantially different view of gliding because you are already living in it.

[cumulusrider]

"How many members of the national squad over the last 30 years have not been professional pilots one may wonder,"

I dont know about over the last 30 years but of the British team flying in the european championships this year only 2 out 12 were professional pilots. The others included a Builder, a graphic designer and an army officer.
I take by professional you mean being paid to fly. All of the team I consider very professional in their ability,skills and judgement.

[ANOpax]

If you can bear the thought of travelling to Yorkshire, then you could book in for a course at Sutton Bank.

Paul Conran (who I believe finished 16th at the recent world championships) will be the guest instructor.

[Piltdown Man]

I was taught some aerobatics at Dunstable back in the 80's - loops, some sustained inverted, chandelles and low beat ups.

Erm... Apart from exceptions like Andy Gough at Bicester, I don't think many people did much sustained inverted flight then and I certainly don't remember anyone at LGC who was capable of doing so then. Beatups (ooops, erm low level passes), barrel rolls, loops, hammerheads etc. Definitely yes! and I would teach people how to do them. And around this time Ray was just just getting into aeros and I believe he became 'qualified' in the early 90's. I remember Ray because he was one of my occasional weekend pupils some years before.

PM

[overun]

ls Ray still active ? l wouldn`t know since being in charge of half a dozen club machines and the private owners at an away couple of weeks l haven`t actually seen him. Some years ago now.

What is the point of your post Sir ? a weeing contest ?

Ray is a good guy. You should treat him with more respect.

[Piltdown Man]

What is the point of your post Sir ? a weeing contest ?

Ray is a good guy. You should treat him with more respect.

Who are you asking the question of and who was disrespectful to Ray? Has a post been deleted?

PM

[overun]

Well, apart from blowing your own trumpet you don`t seem to have added a lot to the thread.





ps. on a personal note, with gold + 3 diamonds, my feeling has been that

bemused, lacking somewhere, x-country pilots turn to taking club

machines to the limits in aero`s as an outlet for their need to achieve,

which l have always found questionable.

ln privately owned kit l`m not even interested.

l wish you well.

[mary meagher]

Good point. If you read the Reno thread, that aircraft was extensively modified and flown to the max at high speed, whereupon the trim tab detached....

Aeros badly flown can cause this old woman to black out, aeros badly flown can cause gliders to loose bits as well; so lets be very very careful to get the right training in the right machines from the right people.

[chubbychopper]

Mary, I accept and agree with the message that you are trying to convey, but suspect that the Mustang in question was probably subjected to a regime of exceedingly stringent maintenance oversight. It was also flown by a pilot with considerable and appropriate experience on type.

Also, I was not aware that the Mustang accident report has been published.

[mary meagher]

Hello, Chubby Chopper, and welcome to the forum.

I'm sure you have read all of the useful thread on the Reno disaster.

But if pilots wait for the official accident report to be published, we usually wait more than a year! and then it can be less than transparent, as I can testify from my own experience. The exchange of information on this forum is often useful, and much more immediate in effect once you have sifted the wheat from the chaff. Which the mods do a fairly decent job in doing from day to day. When an official report is published, the chaff remains in print forever, unchallenged. I could give a couple of examples; we observed a 180 pilot stuff his aircraft into the hedge at our field, returning in terrible weather when we had ceased flying because of poor viz. He chose to land where his wife was waiting with the car, rather than proceed to a better alternate.

Read the accident report? he wrote most of it!

[chubbychopper]

Mary, thank you for the warm welcome.

[overun]

Mary, you have some balls.

[mary meagher]

Negative. Never did.

[overun]

l didn`t say that they were your own.

[thermick]

Ref JW411's posting on 6th Sept regarding glider aerobatics and Doug Bridson. We Boy entrants at St Athan thought that he was a real hero. I remember trying to concentrate on parade ground drill practice while he was overhead flying a Chipmunk and hovering it into wind.
He gave me my first glider flight at St Athan in 1956, my next was in 1968 after I learnt that defective colour vision was not a barrier to flying. I have clocked up around 7500 launches and 4500 hours gliding plus a few hundred hours power
since, I am still gliding, still enjoying it and still learning.
Does anyone else have memories of Doug and what happened to him? I am sure that there could be enough to write an entertaining book