COMBAT AND COMPETITION.pdf - Lakes Gliding Club

CHAPTER TEN CHARIOTS OF FIRE
In 1954 when Camphill hosted the World Championships, and the
British weather did its worst, Geoffrey Stephenson flew a new laminar
flow version of the Elliott built Olympia - the Olympia Eon IV.
Rumour had it that he, like Tony D2 with the Skylark, was unhappy
about the low speed performance. When I visited Camphill with Anne
Burton, my wife to be, we saw the Olympia IV, and I talked to Steve.
His rather guarded reaction to my questions suggested that there might
well be some substance in the stories about it.
One pleasant surprise on that trip to Camphill was Fred Slingsby's
generous loan of his new Eagle two seater for the first week of our
honeymoon which we had planned to spend at the Long Mynd. The
Eagle was being flown in the World Championships by the Welches -
Lome and Ann Douglas having married earlier in the summer. And,
quite unknown to them, we were already in touch with the Reverend
Marcus Morris, editor of the 'Eagle', a boys' magazine published by
Hulton Press, who had agreed to use it for a new publicity stunt.
The magazine would run a series of competitions and the winners
would be awarded with free flights. We would look after the glider and
take it from venue to venue round the country on a succession of
weekends throughout the year. Anne was a journalist, and in PR,
which was a great help in dealing with the somewhat devious minded
editor and she had more ideas in the pipeline. Slingsby was in the
picture too - well pleased about the publicity which it would bring to
his company.
With hindsight the establishment must have been gravely offended
that we had acquired an attractive perk without consulting them. They
took action while we were away on our honeymoon and control of the
project passed to Ann Welch. But there was more to it than that. With
our elder daughter, Virginia, soon on the way the loss of the Eagle
seemed to spell the end of any competition flying in the immediate
future.
So I got myself onto the tug pilots' list at Lasham and we acquired
a pre-war grocer's van to serve as our weekend accomodation. Quite
unroadworthy, the outer shell mostly held together by its paint skin
and we slept on the floor. It was all we could afford at the time.
July 1955 - we were installed on a concrete hardstanding near the
clubhouse, with Virginia just six weeks old, and I was busy aerotowing
in the pre-contest period - when a sort of miracle landed on our
doorstep.
Not that he looked the least like one. In an elderly Harris tweed
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