Originally Posted by
POBJOY
Dave You certainly are not missing anything. The Centre of excellence in ATC Gliding was at the VGS coal face. Whilst still an instructor (old school wood types) I was fortunate to get involved with (the then) PFA type of aviation and indeed operated both a VW engined machine and a 1932 Comper Swift.
Of course all this meant getting involved with the maintenance and certification of these types and also led to doing flight tests on homebuilt aerobatic and racing machines.
It occurred to me that there was a huge amount of tech expertise 'out there' that designed, built, flew, and modified a whole range of aircraft.
Many of these people were also involved with ATC Gliding and yet were never involved with anything to do with 'new equipment'.
Our CO at Kenley was a tech Civil Servant at a Government armament facility and has us building all manner of 'equipment' including duralumin retrieve trolleys for the Mk 111. What is my point; well it showed me that we had a huge cache of 'capability' at the schools which it appears was not matched at HQ. The CO's conferences (as was) were actually a real 'pooling ' of hands on experience that of course made the Gliding Schools a World Class safe operation that set high standards. Sometimes this was frustrating to a young staff cadet as one of the 'local' rules instigated by our school was a 100 solo's before you could fly AE Cadets as a P2 (mainly because our site was smaller than average).Of course this was entirely 'safety based' and kept us young loons under control.(nearly) !!!
At 613 there was a saying'you can fix anything with locking wire or insulating tape'.
Not quite true of course as us staff cadets were sometimes detailed to 'glue' a fabric patch on with dope!