COMBAT AND COMPETITION.pdf - Lakes Gliding Club

CHAPTER FIFTEEN FULL CIRCLE
formally to the prize giving ceremony. There was a pregnant silence.
They were waiting for Chris and myself. The nightmare got worse!
Minutes later - perhaps the longest minutes of my life - we were
pushing our way into the crowded briefing room. They hadn't dared
to sing 'Why are we waiting?' in front of Royalty and HRH was still
smiling. The nightmare was over.
Time for Chris and I to do our double act, as we had with Tom
Kerr in the previous year.
"Lunch?" said the Duke, when I passed him the first plastic bag full
of gliding goodies-part of somebody's winnings-and I totally forgot
to hold my stomach in!
At the end of the championships Chris had been the Director for
a long time. He had done a marvellous job. But his new home was too
far away and the Lasham Committee thought it was time to bring in
someone with current contest flying experience. A 'local man' could
combine the role of Chairman and Director once more. I suggested Bob
Bickers and offered to put in one more year myself. But Bob was
posted to Germany.
My thoughts went back to the pilot operated start controversy of
the previous winter. Had my own reaction been just a shade too
conservative and fuddy duddy? Was the 'set in his ways geriatric' too
much in the ascendancy? It was over ten years since I had last flown
in competitions. Perhaps I too was out of touch. At all events it seemed
a good moment to stand down.
Those three championships, working with Marconi/GEC Avionics,
had a pleasant sequel. Four years later Ron Howard, who had become
Managing Director, visited the Championships. In the evening he and
his wife dropped in to see us and we had a long chat about old times.
He wrote me a letter afterwards, which contained the following
passage.
You may not know that our German, Italian, and French excursions
paid off extremely well in the long run. The people we got to know in
the early sixties gave us the Concorde systems and ultimately, by the
seventies, our massive business on Tornado. This was really a superb
example of the large outcome which results from doing a good early
marketing job.
The Tornado work, and the substantial business which we generated
in the USA after 1965, accounts for the majority of our activity. For the
last two years GEC Avionics has been the biggest exporting company in
the group (around £200 million pa)...... We currently deliver digital
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