DaveUnwin:-
...and I just wish that all the people who have - for whatever reason - done their best to destroy ATC gliding, could've seen her face after we landed, and then reflect on what they have done.
Your post (#2055) is perhaps the one that most captures the ethos of the ACO, extending back even further than when I was allowed off (3 times!) in sole charge of a T31 at Christchurch in 1957. I remember singing out loud for joy around the circuit (mercifully not so loud that I was heard from the ground!).
Your point about the use of gliders to fire an enthusiasm that is for instance so necessary to facing the challenges and setbacks inherent to becoming professional aircrew (military or civil) is thus well made. All the more reason then to determine who are, "the people who have - for whatever reason - done their best to destroy ATC gliding".
There has been a lot of flak here about those who presently hold senior posts and stand accused of orchestrating the destruction of ACO gliding. Now, I do not speak for them and it certainly seems clear that there has been much evidence of clay covered feet, but the responsibility for this "pause" lies not with them, nor even with the MAA (for whom I definitely do not speak!), but with those Air Officers who set about so successfully to subvert the airworthiness of not only ACO gliders but of every aircraft on the UK Military Register.
As has been said here before, this forum alone has threads relating to Airworthiness Related UK Military Fatal Air Accidents accounting for 63 deaths. It is the desperate measures that have been put in hand by the MAA to prevent that toll climbing ever higher that resulted in the fait accompli which is the theme of this thread.
That the MAA is part of the problem rather than the solution is an ironic twist to this, the most serious threat that has faced the RAF since WWII. That threat however lies outside the bounds of thread drift. My basic point though does not, that this grounding is as a direct result of the malevolent assault on UK military airworthiness in the late 80s/ early 90s. Unless and until that is faced up to (as it was not by the Nimrod Review), that threat will remain.