Download - Vintage Glider Club

OBITUARIES
Below: Jean-Paul Robin closes the canopy
of a Castel 25S, the
mythical glider flown in
the film La Grande
Vadrouille
still in France a most popular feature
with over 18 millions entries and countless
television appearances.
Based on this, we use the restored
machine as our main publicity stunt last
season with the press and local television
chain and as a result, a lot of people just
came to the airfield to see “Le planeur de
la Grande Vadrouille”
Jean-Paul last flew in September when
we hosted a vintage week-end for the vintage
members of Lyon Corbas. He was
taken ill to hospital the following week
and asked for a permission to come to the
airfield to de-rig the Castel in November
A party from the club was present at his
funeral.
Francis Humblet
PIERO MORELLI
We are sad to note that PIERO
MORELLI, passed away on January
2nd 2008 at the age of 83. The aviation
and the soaring world will never forget
him and his brother Alberto who also
passed away 3 years ago.
Vincenzo Pedrielli
Roger Crouch
remembers Dick Stratton
RICHARD BRIAN (DICK) STRAT-
TON. (1923-2007), who was for many
years the BGA’ s Chief Technical Officer,
started his remarkable aviation career as
an RAF Flight engineer on flying boats,
later becoming involved with the flight
testing of the Saunders Roe Princess flying
boat, the SR 53 rockets aircraft and P
531 helicopter. He followed this up by
becoming Chief engineer for CSE Aviation
at Oxford Airport Kiddlington,
and later still an aviation consultant.
A Fellow of the Royal Aeronautical
Society, he was also a Royal Aero Club
Silver Medallist , awarded for his services
to aviation. His long association with
gliding began when he joined the
ATC Gliding School at
Christchurch in the early1950s,
where he quickly became an
instructor– an activity he continued
well in to his seventies. After
a short spell in the Isle of Wight
gliding club, he began his long
association with the RAFGSA
joining their club at Andover.
After the founding of the
RAFGSA at Bicester. Dick quickly
became one of its stalwarts,
tug pilot, instructor, converter of
the Chipmunk tugs to modern
engines, and general gliding guru.
The list is endless. Living next to the
airfield as he did, seldom a day went past
when he was not there, supporting and
helping especially the young in their
gliding and flying. He must have sent
dozens of people solo over the years.
Dick, who during his time as BGA
CTO set up a glider,motor glider and tug
maintenance system that we could be
proud of ,had little time for petty officialdom.
He was an engineer of the “if it ain’t
broke, don’t fix it” brigade and the stories
of his practical approach to engineering
and flying are legendary. “I shall
never forget the huge compass error on
a Bicester RF-4 with the aid of a portable
MiG Welding kit” says one person. Or,
on another occasion, when discussing
another modification to a glider , Dick
said “use stiff nuts”. Not happy with that
“ replied the engineer, “Dear boy” said
Dick, “entire American aircraft are held
together with stiff nuts. Why in God’s
name do you want to start a rabbit warren?!”
“OR again” “Rubbish, just get on
with it and don’t muck about”, -this last
bit of the sentence was always with his
characteristic twitch of his shoulders.
His last project was to oversee the
rebuild of the Ulster GC’s Super Cub. A
very fitting memorial to his engineering
skills.
It’s also thanks to him that many a
PFA aircraft is flying in the UK and very
often on MOGAS- the use of which he
trailed in order to make it legal. There
was not a Gliding Club in the UK that
he did not visit, even after he gave up as
CTO, always offering advise and encouragement
wherever he went. It was largely
due to his encouragement that clubs
exchanged their often dangerous and inefficient
winches and cables for modern and
safer ones.
On a personal al note, Dick gave me
my first flight in a glider at glider at the
age of nine, and the instructor on my abintitio
course, a general gliding mentor
and friend. I was immensely privileged to
re-solo him after he regained his medical
on his 80th birthday in the same type of
glider as my first solo in a T.21. Just
days before his death the showed me with
glee evidence of his latest victory over
the (Gatwick) “Kremlin” (his name for
the C.A.A.) - a refund of the fee they had
demanded for his engineering licence
renewal.
As a person, Dick was- to quote from
one of his many admirers- “often blunt,
and only rarely wrong – but he was also
quietly thoughtful and , behind his gruff
façade , a kind and gentle soul”. One
Right: Dick Stratton
Below: Saunders Roe
Princess flying boat on
which Dick was a flight
engineer
could fill a book about this remarkable
man – suffice to say, Gliding, the Wind
Rushers GC, and British Aviation will
be the poorer for his passing. Dick, we
will miss you.
Roger Crouch. Reprinted from the
December 2007- January 2008
SAILPLANE & GLIDING.
CW adds, Dick always came forward to
greet him when he arrived at Bicester. He
was often seen doing the most menial
tasks such has retrieving winch cables
and gliders and driving the winch etc,
even during bad weather, or just being a
very good club member of the old
school. We need more like him to resist
the “stuff and nonsense” (his phrase) of
the various “Kremlins” in Europe and
beyond. I was very honoured to have had
him for a very warm friend for so many
years. ❏
48 VGC News No. 123 Spring 2008