1975

That is the year I joined this club. The Elmira glider is what I was flying on Tinkers, slope soaring being something totally new to me having just moved back to God’s own county from leafy Warwickshire.

The other model is a Dave Boddington “Empress” (I think) club 20 racer. As well as being a fairly cheap form of pylon racer they also made good sports models provided you had a good eye and fairly quick reactions.

He will probably not forgive me for telling you this but the small ginger person in some of the pictures is now a club member and over forty years old.

Note the Horizon (ALL BRITISH) 27 MHz radio.

I think it had 5 channels and cost about as much as a modern 2.4GHz set.

I forget the wingspan of the model but it was quite big even though the small person makes it look bigger.

No interest in the model then!

Finally: Who and what is this then?

Nice to see that David and Bernard are resurrecting the old club magazine “PEGBOARD” that I created back in the early eighties! It is a lot smarter than mine was then being electronic and put together by someone who is far more computer literate than I. I wish I still had some of the original copies because they would make very interesting reading as to what the club was all about 30 years ago.

When I started it up men didn’t type and I will long remember having to exercise all my powers of persuasion with Sue my boss’s secretary to clandestinely transcribe my handwritten articles onto a wax sheet which then was attached to a rotating drum and printed onto foolscap paper. Even paper sizes were measured in Imperial measurements in those days. We then had to pay a considerable sum to send them out in the post. Some things have actually got better in this electronic age.

I wonder if anyone does have any of the old, probably now yellow and faded, early issues I am sure David would appreciate the copy but probably not having to retype them in order that they become readable.

Some Golden Oldies – When they were younger!

Trevor very kindly passed these old photographs which came from John Woodhouse.  I think that both John and Trevor are in there somewhere together with some more of the Golden Era members.

The Dunford Bridge flying, site together with Honley Recreation Ground, are well before my time but Hade Edge has fond memories for me except for the track leading to it. Les Barton, our club mechanic at the time, probably got a lot of business from it; mainly broken springs and sumps.

A lot of members will pass the Bird’s Edge site without knowing it was ever possible to fly from there. If you approach the Whams from Bird’s Edge village by turning up by the school, when you get to the tee junction you are looking at our old field – now covered in willow.

The pictures on Tinker intrigued me in that they show almost all the club members at the time; in 1975 we had about 40 members. Notice though how the hill has changed, when the picture was taken the top was covered in heather.

Thank you John and Trevor for passing them on I found them very interesting.

If any other member has any old club picture or even new ones of say a particularly good model email me a copy and until the site runs out of space I will put them up on the web site.