Closing the stable door perhaps. Now if only there had been an engineer in charge BEFORE they gave all the aircraft and gliders away maybe he could have come up with a way to fix them.

ASRAAMTOO

Agreed, but he/she wouldn't need to come up with a way. It's a job for one of his/her most junior staff, who 'simply' had to follow the regs, which is all Aerobility and Grob will be doing now. But as time passed, and more and more senior people failed, it would have been embarrassing to admit this, so my guess is it was never attempted in any serious way.

The contractual relationship (if any) between Grob and MoD is key. Grob own the IPR and hold the Master Drawing Set. Therefore, if they were not contracted direct to be the Design Authority, then whoever did the job could only be the Design Custodian (with limited authority and role), and only then if MoD directed a sub-contract on Grob to provide a set of Secondary Masters, and maintain them through a support agreement. In such cases, if the DA is deemed a suitable company to design, build and supply the aircraft in the first place, one might ask why bother with a Custodian... Either MoD didn't want to use Grob, or Grob didn't want the job. But either way, they still needed to be contracted, for (ultimately) Safety Case reasons. Therein lies a primary root cause. That's why I mention the only Def Stan that has ever set out the detailed procedures for doing this work. It's the Bible, and anyone in MoD involved in this area should know it backwards, long before they ever get promoted into a project team. Until 1992, everyone who did this stuff received a personal maintained copy (i.e. you were named in the Amendment List distribution). That may be unique in MoD, and is indicative of how important it all was.

I see that the first Vigilant (ZJ968) has appeared on the UK Civil register as G-IDOO.

Amazing. For six years the RAF/MoD/ACO spectacularly failed to achieve anything with regard to the Vigilantes, and yet within what - six weeks -there's been real progress towards returning some to airworthy status. Real progress that has been made, remember, in the middle of a pandemic. Quite remarkable.

Six years to do nothing - six weeks to do loads. There we all were thinking that if takes six years to do nothing that in engineering terms the Vigilant must be something like a cross between a Starfighter and a Space Shuttle, and it turned out it was actually a fixed-undercarriage glider with a VW Beetle engine stuck on the front. Who knew?

Most of us.....

Not quite dead
 

Apparently it should have been G-DODO, and it is still classed as a SLMG. Since when did the CAA get involved with those !!! I thought the BGA / LAA covered them.

No sense in spending all that money on an old airframe (Oh of course its not their money) Perhaps the Police should be informed seeing as the Cadets had all these airframes stolen from them.

G-IDOO is an EASA aircraft certified as a CS-22A : Sailplane or Powered Sailplane - Utility Category.

It is a fixed-wing self-launching motor glider.

https://ukaviation.news/former-air-c...th-aerobility/

1st comment says it all.

Why not some refurbished back to the Cadets
 

Of course once you accept that the fiasco has happened then you could implement 'damage limitation'.
Aerobility only wanted 10 machines, so why could not the rest get the same treatment and carry on the work they were doing.
I think it was all part of getting 'power' out of the volunteer element of VGS and boosting the AEF flights.
Even 40 Vigs spread around the country could impact on the Air element of the RAF Cadets and be positioned to access the regions that have poor 'mainstream' AEF coverage.
There would certainly not be a staffing problem and indeed much useful experience would have been retained to the benefit of all.
A powerful lobby from the head of 2FTS could have impacted on this, but of course it was not in his mind to see 'Volunteers' in the system at all, and the so called 'leadership' at Cranwell thought the Cadet movement was all about twatter and facebook not about flying.
With the true cost of firewall forward replacement and 'new' cockpit fit plus certification probably being around £60k per machine it would still be better value for money to have these SLMG giving AE countywide than loosing them from the system.
Perhaps the new BOSS at Cranwell could look at this,he certainly has the right background.

Now that Air Cadet gliding has started again at Little Rissington, some questions:

1. How many Viking gliders are based there?
2. Roughly how many launches per day are there?
3. Does Air Cadet gliding take place outside the promulgated gliding site (2nm / 2800' amsl)?

Since Mar 2017, there have been 2 x Viking vs. GA airproxes at Little Rissington; one was outside the gliding site and the other was held to be a Class E event, in which normal separation was maintained.

2FTS are seeking an ACP to establish an ATZ at Little Rissington, which would be active at weekends and on Public Holidays, other times by NOTAM. When the ATZ is not active nor is other NOTAM'd military activity taking place, would the site still be considered to be an active gliding site even though there was nobody there?

Can an ATZ really be justified?

The Canadian Air Cadet program has had to cancel this summers gliding and powered airplane camps due to the COVID-19 pandemic. This is a gut punch to those selected as they will probably not get another opportunity to learn to fly. The good news is the Air Cadets are well into a factory remanufacture program for their 2-33 gliders. They are going back to the factory and getting a total overhaul with a 20 year life extension. This combined with the recent new tow plane program will ensure that a robust gliding program will be maintained for the foreseeable future.

Doing it right
 

That's what you get when the organisation is well lead and tech competent. I suspect they will even find a way to look after those who missed out. Perhaps the new Cmt could 'pop over the pond' and get briefed by those who know how to do things well.

Beagle The answer is NO, i would have thought a standard G site (poss with Cables) is sufficient, especially as it is the 'cable' element that is difficult to spot and not well understood by many GA folk. Surely LR was a Vig site before and cables not an issue. Many GA pilots are not familiar with any gliding operations, and do not realise that a glider on a winch launch has no ' forward'' vis (in the normal sense) and therefore it may just as well be marked for what it is and avoided, which is better than relying on an already overloaded Notam system. Of course this highlights the other issue of Zones and such like in that the charts get so cluttered with 'clutter' that there is little room to thread your way in the VFR world, and many more choke points to contend with. With so much use being made of 'Sky Demon' and other such devices the V of VFR seems to be a very mute point as I always thought it meant looking outside the cockpit, not relying on talking to someone on the radio to tell you. Myself I always keep a solvent cloth to hand to wipe the oil off the goggles.

Certainly needs an ATZ. I did a week as Course Admin Officer there back in 1991 for the first Vigi weekday course; the Cherokee from the Brize Aero Club kept flying though the circuit and disrupting operations, on one occasion appearing climbing from the Valley to the west of the airfield right in line with the runway in use just as a Vigi got airborne on the runway so we got no warning and were unable to warn the instructor in the Vigi.
Brize were aware we were operating (we used to phone them every morning to confirm) and also knew the radio frequency in use.(Then the BGA frequency 129.975; frequency nowadays is 120.775) and there was a NOTAM for the weekday gliding activity too.

That was 30 years ago and before my time at the Brize Flying Club - I would hope that local airspace users are better informed these days....

There used to be exaggerated claims from the Vigilant operators of GA aircraft "...in our airspace". In truth few if any were closer than 2nm or 2000ft a.g.l. to Little Rissington.

Perhaps (as in one of the only 2 Airproxes in the last 3 years), some people simply haven't realised that Air Cadet gliding has made a welcome return after the Vigilant fiasco?

Better publicity is certainly needed - but an ATZ???

Could be served by an annotation of the glider cable hazard height as with other gliding airfields but then in my experience, few GA pilots take notice of this; I used to warn countless aircraft every day about the cable hazard at Lasham and still people thought it was all right to fly over the airfield at 2500ft QNH. As Rissy is higher than Lasham amsl, the glider hazard will be higher too plus as it's a government airfield, surely it would be possible to notify an ATZ as 'Sat,Sun and PH HJ; OT by NOTAM' especially as there is a discrete frequency to call them on. As a precedent, Halton has an ATZ notified daily '0900 - 2000 or SS +15 (1 hour earlier in summer)'.
Simples?

The G /2.8 annotation is now shown on the CAA 1:500 000 chart - for those who use it!

Why is anything else needed? Plenty of nearby gliding sites operate quite happily without any ATZ.

What would you suggest is a good avoid of an Air Cadet Gliding field? Vertical? Lateral? For all directions? 2000ft AGL? 2-2.5 miles? Clear of Cloud? What would cover that?

The standard promulgation as for any other gliding site! Normally 2 nm radius up to the stated cable height limit - which in the case of Little Rissington is 2800ft amsl.