COMBAT AND COMPETITION.pdf - Lakes Gliding Club

CHAPTER NINE A KIND OF APPRENTICESHIP
Louis got down safely, after diving off his remaining height and
pulling up at the last moment, to land on a 45° slope which towered
straight into cloud. Expecting to slide backwards, and damage his
aircraft, he was held securely by the plantation of tiny bushes in which
he had just landed. His luck had held out to the last.
Shortly after our abortive Nationals, Charles came to the
conclusion that his sinuses were not improving and he decided to take
a long gliding sabbatical. It was a sad end to a brief and happy
partnership.
At the club we would miss his advice and experience as much as
his slow, almost pedantic, turn of speech and quaint sense of humour.
Charles was a delightful eccentric. Like Philip Wills he smoked a pipe
and packed the tobacco into a little paper bag. A deliberate weapon in
the cut and thrust of a meeting, if you used it as Philip did, spinning
it out inordinately, bemusing the opposition. But not Charles. There
was no guile about him.
The following year Theo Testar stood down and I became CFI at
the Mynd. And Charles in a last generous gesture offered me his
Olympia for the Nationals.
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