Visit by 1st Shawbury Air Scouts
RAF Shawbury Gliding Club were delighted to welcome a group from 1st Shawbury Air Scouts on Friday 10 September. The Scouts arrived at 1930 and following an introductory talk and Q&A session by the Chief Flying Instructor Ian Gallacher, the party split into three groups for the tour of Hangar 4. For the tour the Scouts were also given a gliding MCQ quiz which added to the fun of the whole evening, all of the answers being delivered at some stage of the tour.
Stand 1 was a mystifying planning exercise run by Colin Haynes. The aim was to give our young visitors some idea of what went into planning a glider flight before setting off (without an engine) on a cross country navigation exercise. A great exercise that invited numerous questions not least, how far could you fly before you hit a mountain?
Ian and Darcy Gallacher, together with Max Thompson, provided the expertise on Stand 2 where the Scouts were given an insight on how a glider is derigged and serviced. With a canopy removed on the K21 it seemed to invoke a lot of questions about safety and how you jumped out of the aircraft in the (rare, well very rare!) case of an emergency. The Scouts also wanted to know what was in the long (glider) trailers. It was confirmed that they were neither a horizontal Giraffe recovery system nor a Crocodile circus wagon!
The two Wills, Will Dean and Will Robinson, incidentally both still young enough to be Scouts, shared their considerable knowledge and experience on Stand 3 where our visitors could sit in a glider and get hands on the controls; it was a great opportunity for selfies. As those with imagination wandered off into the super world of “Top Gun” (complete with accompanying sounds) others, and perhaps those who had been concerned with safety on Stand 2, wandered if the Yellow knob fired the ejector seat!
The evening ended with pop and crisps in the clubroom, the quiz answers and some fantastic gliding videos from Ian Gallacher’s library of achievements including, and one that really caught the interest, of an inverted glider on tow flying over Dubai. A more enthusiastic group of visitors one could not image and a great credit to their scout group. We look forward to seeing some of them on the airfield in the near future, who knows some may be the pilots of the future.
