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67 Years of the London Gliding Club by Ted Hull

First published in the Dunstable & District Local History Society Newsletter 1997

Dunstable Gliding Club
Photograph by Mr Omer Roucoux 2004

In 1929, encouraged by reports of gliding achievements in Germany, a luncheon party was organised in London and 56 people attending formed the British Gliding Association. Of these, 37 got together to form a club for the London area and the London Gliding Club was inaugurated 20th February 1930. By this time, two or three very basic gliders had been constructed and these were borrowed for the first meeting at Stoke Park Farm, Guildford, in March 1930.

A search for a hilltop site to launch from resulted in the Club setting up at Down Farm on the Ivinghoe to Aldbury road, but after a month it was asked to move on the grounds that the noise was disturbing the birds on the adjoining Ashridge Estate.

By the middle of May, the Club had secured the use of Ivinghoe Beacon and enthusiasm was intense. An instructional week was organised and a charge of 2.10.0 covered instruction and tent accommodation. By now, there were five single seats and one two-seat gliders being used. A competition was set up between the London Club and the Lancashire Aero Club, the aggregate times of alternate launches being logged. The contest came to a halt when the Lancashire glider roosted in the tops of a stand of fir trees at the foot of the Beacon. London Gliding Club had totalled 12 minutes 52 seconds and the Lancastrians 8 minutes 5 seconds.

A demonstration by the German ace Robert Kronfeld with his beautiful 'Wein' glider in July attracted a visit by the Prince of Wales. All this activity brought crowds of onlookers, the LMS Railway even running excursions to Tring from Euston. When local roads got blocked by cars, the police forced the Club to move on.

It was then that the Club was befriended by farmer Tom Turvey of Totternhoe village, who offered free accommodation for gliders in a barn (where, incidentally, a cow calved on a wing) and the use of his farmhouse for Club teas. Initially a field to the west of the Tring Road was used, but then the present field was rented from farmer Pratt.

By 1932, three hangars bad been erected and a sectional First World War army hut assembled as a clubhouse. The chore of hauling gliders up the hill for launching soon palled and a pulley and rope system was devised. Launching was carried out with an elastic rope called a bungee.

Three or four people pulled on each side of the bungee vee rope hooked onto the nose of the glider. They ran down the slope and when the elastic was at full stretch the glider was released and off it went. Later, a cable drum was bolted to the jacked up back wheel of an old but powerful American car and winch launching was introduced, pulling the glider up into the air like a kite. The next development was launching by a tow from an aircraft - expensive, but offering much longer flight tines.

The ace British pilot of these early days was Eric Collins, an instrument maker from Flamstead. In a short career of only 3 years he mastered the art of using thermal air currents for soaring and made several cross country flights from the Downs, one of them setting a two-seater record distance. He earned the first British international Silver Badge for Gliding, but was tragically killed in 1935 when doing glider acrobatics in Alan Cobham's Air Circus.

The simple primary gliders, looking like a flying 5-bar gate, were superseded by much higher performance craft, but were still used for solo instruction. It was not until after the war that training on two-seat gliders was introduced. The spruce, plywood and fabric construction was used until the 1960's when modern glass fibre techniques became the norm. Performance increased dramatically over the years. Whereas primary gliders could only fly some 12 feet forwards for every foot of height loss, present day machines are achieving 60 feet at much higher speeds. This enables a glider to cover great distances in the course of a soaring day, flights of over 500 km having been completed many times from Dunstable.

In 1935, the Club's wooden hangars were replaced by the present building designed by a club member, renowned architect Kit Nicholson, who became National Gliding Champion in 1938 and 39. The clubhouse was rated by Niklaus Pevsner as a significant breakthrough in '30s design and is now a listed building.

The period 1939-45 saw the Club become a prisoner of war camp; the workshop and tractor shed (camp prison block) are remnants of those days. In the late 70s a new complex of tug hangar, office and bunkhouse accommodation was built, greatly enhancing the facilities, and over the last forty years the airfield has been enlarged by the addition of adjoining fields with overhead power lines being buried.

The story of how the Club bought its field is worth relating. Farmer Pratt, seeing the Club expand with new buildings and flourishing membership, sought to increase the rent. A club member, Espin Hardwick, was a Birmingham stockbroker and moreover owned a Rolls Royce car. One fine Sunday, taking with him his young daughter, he visited Farmer Pratt, told him who he was and that he fancied speculating by buying the land that was being used for gliding. Pratt, playing for time, admitted he might sell but stated that he never did business on a Sunday. "Fair enough", replied Espin, "can my little girl look round your farm?" Presently, coming across a litter of sheep dog puppies, she appealed to her daddy to let her have one. Daddy pointed out that it belonged to Mr. Pratt who when approached offered to let them have it for 1. "Ah Ah", said Espin,"I thought you never did business on a Sunday, so what about that land?" The deal was done. Espin rented the site to the Club for 5% of his outlay with the option to buy it from him when the money could be raised, and this duly happened.

Membership fluctuates between 350 and 450 of which about 10% are women. The Club operates 4 tug aircraft, 6 two-seat and 5 single seat gliders and there are some 90 privately owned aircraft on site. The most exotic of these competition crafts can cost as much as 100,000, so most of these tend to be owned by groups of three or four members,

The Club welcomes visitors and anyone wishing to try gliding can have a trial instructional flight. Alternatively 1, 2 or 5 day training courses can be booked for those wishing to take up the sport seriously. On summer evenings, a group booking can be made for members of works, schools or clubs, an experience not to be missed !

Page last updated: 23rd January 2014