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Aviation History
1962
1962 - 0024.PDF
' 24 FLIGHT International, 4 January 1962 B U S S 1 PORT A N N E S D S A WIDER VIEW FLIGHT'S Private View this year will scan a wider horizon, with the column's com ment expanding to cover new aspects of aviation sport. P.P.O. on power flying will be joined initially by Ann Welch on gliding and Mike Reilly on parachuting. Mrs Welch is widely known as vice-chairman of the British Gliding Association and captain of the British team at many postwar world gliding championships; while Mike Reilly is British parachuting representative on the FAI and an experienced world- contest parachutist. P.P.O., who originated the popular and controversial Private View feature, wishes to remain anonymous. " The tremendous need to improve international understanding and friendship ..." Private View BY P.P.O. I F you asked the average private pilot "What is the FAI?" 1 doubt if one in ten would be able to tell you. Most would not even know that the letters stand for Federation Aeronautique Internationale—rightly in French because, as those of us who have studied the history of aeronautics know, France is the genuine birthplace and home of the spirit of sporting flying. The FAI is an international organization with headquarters in Paris, whose purpose is to encourage sporting aviation in all its aspects, whether it be private flying, parachuting, gliding, or aero- modelling. It is the international body responsible for records for anything that flies from a model to a manned satellite. It numbers among its members the national Aero Clubs of, I think, about 39 countries, including the United States of America as well as the Soviet Union and many other nationals the other side of the curtain. Our own Royal Aero Club is an active member, and the FAI Secretary-General, Mr Gillman, is an Englishman, but it is a truly international body of aviation enthusiasts, who think more of forwarding the interests of sporting aviation than they do of narrow national prejudices or prestige. Although the FAI has been in existence for many years, the actual amount of active good to flying that it has been able to do is terribly small in proportion to the tremendous need, which is both to improve the conditions of the sporting aviator and his hobby, and to improve international understanding and friendship. But whatever the FAI has been able to do has been all on the credit side. However, it could be that the Federation is on the eve of great things. Coming away from a brief visit to a recent conference, and much impressed by the general atmosphere, I felt it could well be so if individual pilots and flying enthusiasts of whatever ilk in every country give it the support it needs. We in this country grumble a great deal about the way that private flying is hampered by the ignorance, stupidity, and preju dice of our own administrators. The same problems exist in varying degrees in other countries, too. And it is not only the problem of laws and regulations all over the world that hamper the develop ment of light aviation. It is the dislike and prejudice—one might almost call it hate—which so many of the ordinary people of the world feel towards aviation, that has to be conquered. The after math of war, the fear that so many people naturally feel of bombing, and the possibility of atomic annihilation, all this has given many quite ordinary, kindly people of all nationalities a dislike of anything that flies. Not unnaturally they will take it out on just anything that comes their way. Just as the proverbial office boy relieves his feeling of injustice after a rebuke from his seniors by kicking the inoffensive cat, so the harassed private citizen is inclined to rejoice at seeing the poor private pilot being kicked around by the bureaucrats in all nations, just to express his resentment at being scared and bull dozed by the big battalions whom he cannot kick. Only familiarity and understanding will cure this feeling. Already, since growing numbers of people have used the commercial air lines for pleasure or business, the prejudice against this form of flying is dying out. The prejudice against the private pilot or owner of a light aeroplane still exists, and is added to by an ordinary feeling of jealousy which nearly everyone feels towards anyone who rather spectacularly appears to be better off. Yachtsmen and motorists once suffered from this prejudice, but now that a dinghy or a motor cycle is within the reach of almost everyone, the feeling has died out. In time it will die out with aviation, and the FAI if supported by flying enthusiasts all over the world can do much to hasten this time. It is significant that one of the strongest sections of the FAI contains the aeromodellers, who carry on their activities in nearly all countries. To build and fly your own model aircraft is certainly not an expensive hobby. Modern light aircraft, certainly in the Turbulent range, are not rich men's toys, and they could be one of the cheapest ways of travel for young people. In the 1960 Daily Mail air race from the centre of London to the centre of Paris, a young
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