COMBAT AND COMPETITION.pdf - Lakes Gliding Club

COMBAT AND COMPETITION
circled overhead, wondering whether he would ever be able to fly
again. Now he runs his own successful timber business, and can
indulge his love of gliding to the full. A charming, warm hearted, and
modest man:
"The Five Three" - he said in his improbable English, for my
number was 53 and this was the first time he had seen the LS-1, "You
have wheel down!"
It must have been like that all the way from Lasham. I tucked it up
and crept away with an embarrassed word of thanks.
Shortly afterwards I declared an out and return to Lincoln. It was
a day of days - high cloud base and small cumulus streeting into the
distance.
I scorched off downwind, hardly circling at all. The return leg was
even better. Close to the Great North Road, where the runways on
some of the old bomber airfields were being dug up for hardcore, dust
devils marked a series of splendid thermals. So strong, in their
turbulent cores, that they took me to cloud base time after time before
the headwind could do its worst. Then it was dolphin flying 10 all the
way, with the valuable assistance of a modern electronic variometer
and speed to fly director.
At 5,000 ft, to the southeast of Oxford, a new record was in the
bag - until everything collapsed over the Thames valley. Drifting
backwards, in a series of weak and broken thermals, I called my crew
on the radio:
"Tookay - from Five Three prepare to roll - Benson Airfield."
After their acknowledgment came another voice:
"Still looks good over Inkpen if you can make it this way."
No mistaking those emphatic tones - and he was right. I could see
cumulus upwind, haloed in the late afternoon sun, far away, beyond
the Berkshire Downs:
"Hullo Nick! Not possible now, but thanks for the information."
Then, as the thought suddenly struck - why are you listening out?"
and Nick Goodhart's reply - "Old war horses stir at the sound of the
trumpets!"
Old war horse he might imply himself to be. Yet he would become
National Champion again in 1971 - with a fourth place, just off the
podium, in the World Open Class the following year - a fitting
conclusion to a great gliding career.
On the opening day of the 1970 Nationals the LS-1 was the only
aircraft to complete the task, an out and return race, from Doncaster
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