Upcoming events
The 12th Annual General Meeting of the Gliding Heritage Centre will take place at 4pm on Sunday 8th September at the workshop. The committee would like to encourage GHC members to attend if they can, by now you should have received the Notice of AGM email with more details. If you haven't, you can access the 2024 AGM documents in the "Members Area" , "Documents" section.
We will be planning more winter talks in the workshop for winter 2024-25, if you would like to do a presentation or know someone who might, please do let the committee know so we can discuss and timetable it. The talks usually start at 4pm and should be no more than an hour long ideally.
Hangar talk.
One job that is always ongoing and needs doing is cleaning the gliders in the hangars. It is always possible to give them a clean and spruce up in situ in the hangar rather than waiting for perfect weather when we could get them out onto the meadow but would rather be flying!
The static display gliders do get very dusty and need to be washed fairly frequently. Please feel free to come over and wash one or two on a non-flying day, we do have everything you'll need in the hangars to give them a clean and your volunteer work will be greatly appreciated.
There has been a bit of a reshuffle in the two hangars, some gliders that were on the floor are now hanging in the ceiling and vice versa, this is always a fluid process and you may find some gliders are not where you last saw them!
Gordon MacDonald's Slingsby T42 Eagle has now returned from a tidy up and paint job (part of which was carried out by Lasham’s new DCFI Ron Smith before he started working at Lasham) The glider looks fantastic, currently it’s in the bottom hangar and well worth a visit to see how well vintage glider can ‘scrub up’ even if it is painted in Gordon’s trademark green!
Group visits
Our Sunday 2pm visits continue every weekend and particularly when the weather is good are still popular and busy. We have been pleasantly surprised by the number of visitors over this Spring and into Summer despite the poor weather that we have generally suffered this soaring season.
This summer we have again welcomed Investin a company that brings 15-18 year olds to Lasham (amongst other places) to look at engineering careers, they visit 2excel, the on airfield large jet maintenance facility and then come to us to look at many different aspects of aircraft engineering in the GHC hangars and workshop.
If you are a member of any other group, Hells Angels motorcycle club, the croquet club or tiddlywinks league, pub quiz team, or you think family members might be interested in a group visit to the GHC we will always welcome you, part of our charities status is to be open to the general public and we never turn anyone down.
Please, if you would like to arrange a group visit do get in contact with Tony Fendall who coordinates the visits via the website page. Tours | The Gliding Heritage Centre
We are always looking for more trained up guides to help us with all the visitors that we get. We have a straight forward training package for anyone who would like to help, an in-depth prior knowledge of Vintage gliders and gliding is not necessary at all.
All that is needed is a willingness to observe a couple of tours or so with an experienced guide and a printout of the gliders histories in hand, (or the website open on your phone) as an aide memoir and you are good to go. It really doesn't take long to build confidence and the tours are very rewarding to undertake.
Please do consider joining our list of GHC guides, the more guides we have the less work for all!
What's going on in the workshop
With the 2024 season in full swing (oh. the weather, the weather….) the GHC gliders and other privately owned vintage gliders have been out on the airfield flying whenever possible.
The recently restored and CofA’d TG3a has proved very popular with GHC members, if you haven’t flown it yet, please do come and have a go, it is unique and the only flying example in the world currently.
The Swiss Spalinger S-21h has had it’s first flights and looks fantastic on the ground and now in the air too. It is currently, slowly (the weather has to be very benign) going through it’s flight test program with the aim to get a full CofA. Watch this space.
Here is a video of the Spalinger’s second flight, a bit more than the first short hop a bit earlier on.
Geoff Clarke continues to make steady progress on the restoration of our first 'glass' glider the Bolkow Phoebus.
Steve Pullen and his small team continue with the restoration of the EoN Eton Primary glider, the plan is to full flying status. Work
on this glider has been rocketing ahead this Spring and it is coming on very nicely now.
Pop in and have a look, the workshop is open Sundays, Tuesdays and Thursdays everyone is welcome but be warned Gary may well find something for you to do!