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Aviation History
1981
1981 - 2166.PDF
/C2£~K % UP Wi«w3WW&0fW%X: •'•-••« Golden Tiger THE Tiger Moth is 50 this year, and to celebrate this the de Havilland Moth Club, whose international mem bership is climbing towards 1,000, is organising a mass formation flight from Hatfield to Cranwell on July 11/12. En route they will fly over RAF Grantham, where the RAF's first six Tigers were delivered in 1931. Guest of honour at Cranwell will be Gp Capt Peter Heath, who was on that delivery flight. Other Moth celebrations later this year include a rally at Woburn Abbey on August 23 and a party at Old Warden on September 13. A major event is being organised for 1982, which sees the 100th anniversary of Sir Geoffrey de Havilland's birth. The Moth Club is keeping quiet about this, but aircraft are expected from far away countries, and if it is as enter prising as the Hatfield-Strathallan rally in 1979 (featured in Flight for July 14 that year) then it should be a vintage event to remember. Enquiries to the deHMC, c/o Stuart McKay, at 16 Thatchers Drive, Maidenhead, Berks (062 882 3475). Fly D.H. at Old Warden JULY 12 at the Shuttleworth Collec tion (Old Warden, Beds) will be a day with a difference, since passenger rides in several classic de Havilland types will be available to visitors. Flights in five types of Moth, plus a Rapide and a newly restored Dragonfly, will be offered at prices from £15 to £75. Harvard flights are going for £100. Among the Moths will be the Puss, Gipsy, Fox and Minor flown by Hugh Field and Cliff Barnett for Flight in the 1975, 1976 and 1977 Christmas issues. Proceeds go to Shuttleworth's de Havilland hangar appeal, and special exemptions from the usual public transport requirements have been granted by the Civil Aviation Authority. Air Britain's fly-in will also be held on this day, and the flying display will include the Oxford and Cambridge Diamond Jubilee Air Race with Bull dogs, planned to commemorate the Varsity Air Race held at Hendon with S.E.5As in 1921. All enquiries to Northill (076 727) 283. 14 Rutan latest DICK RUTAN, who last month set a new straight-line distance record of 4,500 miles in a LongEz (see Flight for June 20), has formed a new com pany called Voyager Aircraft for a planned non-stop flight of 25,000 miles. Rutan and his partner, Jeana Yeager, are looking for finance to construct an aircraft to a new design by Burt Rutan, although the Rutan Aircraft Factory will not actually build it. The aircraft will be of carbonfibre com posite construction and use the Vari- Eze/LongEz proven concepts of a canard configuration with winglets. Burt Rutan is also working on other projects, including a homebuilt sail plane kit design for the Soaring Society of America's design competi tion, due to be judged later this year. It is a single seat, self-launching ultra light similar in construction to Rutan's Eze designs. The SSA hopes to de velop interest in inexpensive self- launching gliders, and a new ultra light soaring class has been discussed in the USA as well as Europe. Some six examples of Rutan's first well-known canard, the VariViggen, are now reported to be flying, includ ing one in France. According to Rutan there are some 400 VariEzes flying in ten countries. Kits for the LongEz became available last month and five aircraft are now flying. The Rutan Aircraft Factory is at Building 13, Mojave Airport, Box 656, Mojave, California 93501. FLIGHT International, 4 July 1981 Private Fmrnomr Official organ of the Royal Aero Club Club Robin's nest HEADCORN Flying School has taken over the operation of Club Robin International, which has run for many years with successful trips by European Robin owners to Senegal, Djerba and the Greek Islands. The school plans to expand member ship, and UK Robin owners have been circularised. The future proposed pro gramme includes an inaugural meet in Le Touquet in September, a com petition weekend at Easter 1982, the Malta Air Rally in June and a Gastro nomic tour of Brittany late next year. Any Robin owner who has not been contacted and is interested in joining Club Robin should contact Peter Mills or Margaret Wood, Club Robin International, c/o Headcorn Flying School, The Aerodrome, Headcorn, Kent, telephone 0622 890724. Spirit of Truro, the Evans VP-2 built by boys from Truro School, is now flying in Corn wall. The project was sponsored by BP Oil's "Challenge to Youth" scheme and local com panies, and took three years to complete Microlight committee for FAI THE FAI is adding microlights to its standing committees. The new com mittee will be known as CIMA (Com mission Internationale de Micro Avia tion), and it will be provisional for one year while it clarifies its relationship with the committees for general avia tion (CIAG), Hang Gliding (CIVL) and the homebuilders (CIACA). The first meeting of CIMA will be on November 17 at the FAI Paris headquarters, 6 rue Galilee. People interested in be coming a national delegate (to CIMA) should contact their national aero club. Ann Welch has been invited to hold office as President until CIMA is established and in a position to hold its own elections. • Pirat Gehriger, one of the best known names in world gliding, died on June 10. As director of the first international gliding competitions at Samedan, Switzerland, in 1948, he set the pace for the many successful world championships held since. He flew in several of them as competitor and was also a military pilot in the Swiss Air Force. He was President of FAI's Gliding Committee (CIVV) for 25 years, and then President of FAI it self. In Swissair he was Deputy General Manager of Flight Operations and then management delegate. His contribution to aviation, backed by forthright commonsense and a great sense of humour, was significant. • Mike Murphy, who was twice world aerobatic champion, President of CIVA, and before that a wartime glider pilot who landed on the Normandy beaches on D-Day, died in early June.
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