50th Anniversary Weekend - Saturday

A successful day despite the mixed weather. Thanks to all who helped, we saw many former members and several members of the public took trial flights.

The duty instructor team included myself and Ray ably assisted by Steve Flowitt-Hill and Tim Davies (although not sure Tim got airborne, I think he got distracted when the bar opened!!), tuggies were Steve Cat and Tony, winchies and airfield helpers appeared as if from no-where - there are too many to mention but thank you everyone who pitched in.

Visiting VGC pilot Tony Maufe flew his Kirby Kite up the wire a few times, and Simon Urry got his Ka6 airborne (many comments of 300k in wood today etc) and Ben Harker completed his Bronze Navex in the Grob109 with Ian Atherton. Special congratulations to Jim Carter on going solo again after a long break from gliding.

In total we did around 30 launches, including 8 trial lesson aerotows and 2 trial winch launches for our former members, and we sold 5 vouchers to return another day.

We had around 30 visiting aircraft on the Saturday including the East Anglian Air Ambulance, and the Mustang from Hardwick that did a beat up along the runway before landing.

Thanks to the 'power' team Mike Bean, Phil Morgan, John Cook, Mike Crook, and Jim Lawn it went off without a hitch. One pilot told me he was so impressed with the friendly atmosphere he was definitly going to come back again!

Saturday we had the local vintage tractor group arrive in convoy, vintage cars and a traction engine as well as a very well used gliding simulator set up in the briefing room. Keith and Sue Panton did a great job selling clothing and other merchandise, and their NGC archive display was interest to many including our newer members.





Jane Flowitt-Hill manned the flight sales office and did a fantastic job at drumming up business. We'd managed to get the tractor group to loan us a tractor trailer fitted out with passenger seats and so Berekely had fun ferrying people to the launch point and back!

The evening bash was a real hoot, with the 'oldies' partying hard!! Graham Ashworth made a lovely speech celebrating the 50 years of the club and the support of the club members, and Ivan Estgate got a special mention for being the person who instigated the club buying the airfield many years ago. After the sumptuous steak buffet served up by the 'food' team Rachel, Eddie, Danielle, Pauline (sorry may have missed few here) The band 'wacscallions' did a great job at getting people on the dance floor.

Special thanks to Eric for sorting out the marquees, dancefloor and band amongst other things, Tony Griffiths for sorting out logos, merchandise and also vouchers at short notice, Paul Thompson for sorting out membership forms and more progress cards, and to Berekely and Eddie for their tireless efforts over the last 2 months in getting the clubhouse and facilities looking great again - You can get some sleep now guys!