Volume 34 No 4 Aug-Sept 1983.pdf - Lakes Gliding Club

simultaneously' and plunged into the side of the hill which wascovered with spectators. There was no fire and the cut andshaken pilot was rushed to the luton and Dunstable Hospital.His wife rushed in shortly afterwards, shouting' Don't worrydarling, I've found your false teeth under the wreckage'. 'Whatdo you mean' he says 'I've got all my teeth right here!' The onlyway we will ever discover how false teeth came to be discardedon the Downs is by asking the dub member who is always watchingthe goings-on 011 the Hill through a telescope. The TechnicalCommittee chairman actually was in no position to criticise thisperformance, since while joyriding he managed to bounce theT-21's wheel on the wings of !1ot one, but two, parked Blaniks,creasing them almost as badly as the aforementioned car. AfterIhis the numbers of joyriders fell off somewhat. Since joyrideswere the prizes ill a raffle, the club did quite well out of thissudden loss of nerve on the pan of tbe winners. Our T-ZI wasunmarked and tbe two Blaniks belOl ged to other clubs, so againGod - or somebody - was on our side.amongst a mass of cars and people, The ~mwd attacked theballoon as though it was Moby Dick, and had to be beaten off bythe balloon's distraught owners. To lose one balloon is a misfortune.To lose two, as Lady Bracknell would say, was bloodycareless. A schoolmaster, who had built a huge envelope out ofclear plastic bags and Sellotape, planned to do a brief fl'ight on atether using a hand-held flame thrower as a heat source. Ofcourse the lousy tether breaks again and off he goes - withouthis flamethrower.Timetable In some disarray"The spectators were having a grand time. The parachutistended on the e1ubhouse roof with a broken leg, and in the midd.leof what was supposed to be a solo a,erobatic display in the Jaskolka,Ralph Chesters looked down through the top of hiscanopy to see the LlIton Flying Club pass through the middle ofhis loop as they strafed the field, the Itimetable having go't intosome disarray. The crowd went wild. John Hands was goinground like Gregory Peck in '12 o'clock high' muttering about'Iivin' on borrowed time'.A huge envelope built of clear plastic bags and Sellotape"From the spectators' point of v,iew (they were get:ting realvalue for money) it was a brave sight: tbe tiny figure crouched inan open steel tube frame dangling under wha't looked like agigantic prophylactic' drift,ing across the setting sun towards, Totternhoe.As he got low in the valley and the sun finally set, someonesaid 'I hope he knows about the power wires' though whatgood tha't knowledge would have done him is beyond me, sincehe had 110 rip panel, no trailrope, no burner, no~ing. Anyway,hardly were these words uttered when we saw a big blue flash ­and all the lights went out for miles around, ruining a planneddinner at the Golf Club that evening and endangering the tropicalfish at Whipsnade Zoo. The pilot - jf that is the rightdescription for a completely passive piece of ballast - wasunscathed. Indeed, in the whole display no one was maimed orkilled, and our fleet was intact. The end of a perfect day, we allsaid, but please, Mr Chairman, Never Again!"Sudden 'oss of nerve on the part of the winners"Finally, there were those pestiferous hot-air balloons. ThankGod they will just be a short-lived fad. First the unmannedMontgolfier replica broke loose from its tether in an east windand, belching smoke and flame, skimmed over the Tiger Mothswhich were refuelling and crashed 20 yards from the clubhouseAugust/September 1983157