Pobjoy
Your talk of the Mk3 is bringing back Happy memory's likely to but is likely bring tears to my eyes but only suppressed by the anger I feel for the lazy incompetent & greedy people who's total failure to what they have been paid to do precipitated this crisis.
There are a lot of people working towards getting servicable aircraft for the cadets to fly but this is still being hindered by people who are in positions of power but lack the knowlage and experience to make sensible decisions and so to hide their lack of ability under outlandish technical requirements and mountains of paperwork.
My hope is that 2017 will see a new broom sweeping through the technical side of VGS gliding provision with the contracts run by people who understand composite structure and have the ability to use the military airworthiness system for the reason it was put in place, not as an excuse for not doing any work.
When the dust settles following the award of contracts will the full story be told but IMO even the apparent lacklustre performance of some of the military VGS management will be seen in a different light when the full story comes to light.
Only when the VGS system has been purged can the cadets benifit from the same opportunity to learn to glide that I and a lot of others on this forum enjoyed and this will come not one moment to soon.