COMBAT AND COMPETITION.pdf - Lakes Gliding Club

COMBAT AND COMPETITION
Perhaps here, amidst these serene surroundings, might lie the
answer to a broken flying career. For the first time there was hope.
Time alone would tell.
That evening Theo Testar gave the course its only formal briefing.
Theo was the club's chief instructor. A commercial traveller of the old
school, proud of his calling, and straight as a die. His little black
Austin 8, which seemed barely large enough to contain its owner,
always shone like a new pin, and he likewise.
We listened to him carefully. A likeable ruddy faced man with a
twinkle in his eye and a slow laugh. As he drew on his pipe and
warmed to his theme we learned that he had served in the RAF as an
instructor during war. Too old for operational flying he was intensely
proud of his time at CFS.
He poured scorr on solo training with a selection of dog eared
photographs to prove the point. 'Hairy moments at Handsworth before
the war' might have been a suitable collective title. In his opinion ab
initio solo training was strictly for the birds! Ha...Ha...Ha... On the
Mynd it was quite out of the question. Hence the fact that courses here
were only open to those with previous experience. Early next year the
club would be taking delivery of its first two seat training glider and
from then on things would be very different.
In Theo's squad that week there was one other ex RAF type, and
a Group Captain who was still in the service. David Dick had flown
Thunderbolts in the Far East and was about to go up to Cambridge. Pat
Moore, quiet and rather shy, was the oldest among us and, as I
discovered when we went hill walking together on the only non flying
day, certainly the fittest. Like Theo he had started gliding before the
war.
Pat had an almost fanatical belief in the minimum size, high
performance, glider. The Windspiel, a tiny lightweight prewar German
design, was his idea of perfection and he was forever trying to get an
updated version built in England. He had to wait another 25 years
before realising that ambition - and when the prototype finally
emerged I had the task of proving it in competition - but that is
another story.
While it remained anticyclonic we took turns to fly off the winch.
Just over 400 feet at the top if you were lucky. Barely enough for a
decent circuit in the Tutor. Basic simple stuff. But there was always
the chance of a thermal. So we worked and sweated in the unbroken
sunshine - retrieving cables, pulling the gliders through bracken and
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