“French Mutton Dressed up as New Zealand Lamb”
by Ian Dunkley
Click here to view photo gallery of France 2006 rally
You would expect rallies held in France, in summer, in areas of beauty, and above all of vineyards, to be popular and you would be right. Two rallies, one a “stop over” on the route to the main rally the following week that, somewhat unsurprisingly, had the highest wine consumption and participating gliders. Over 100 in fact with conservatively 300 or more pilots, crew and family. Hosted by a club of only 25 members, but good local sponsorship, it was showed what keen members can achieve with two years planning, problems for themselves, that they try hard to overcome, and general enjoyment by everyone else. Even the caterer decamping with the food on Thursday, the borrowed winch leaving on Friday, and a somewhat acrimonious VGC AGM, did not spoil an excellent week.
This being France, things were somewhat different as far as the airfields were concerned, both were “international” on a small scale, a tower, terminal buildings, good hangars, long hard runway, fire engines and the very occasional, or non existent, international flights. Quite different to your normal gliding club site with an often leaking hangar, a club house, if there is one, looking rather unloved and a supportive airfield and local community. Lets hope they can hang on to all this despite the airspace, air worthiness problems looming ahead.
As at most vintage rallies flying was informal with everyone doing their own thing, no competitive activities being organised, any competition was between individual pilots or against the elements. Long flights were made by many, either in distance or time terms, including 300kms in 40-50 year old gliders, and why not? The extremely long queues for launching, 4 hours on one day, gave photographers a field day, which pretty well describes the experience of pilots at the back of the queue. A single two drum winch and a small handful of tugs not being anything like sufficient on circuit days or if a number of pilots were sharing a glider.
The parties, that to crew and families, and lets face it many pilots, always the best part of the week, were excellent, as usual and an eye opener to the many younger pilots. Any grandchildren present, to watch a bunch of “old farts”, some in their 80’s disco dancing and repeating their 1950’s youth with “Rock around the Clock” would have found it unbelievable.
The “International Evening”, the main party requires every nation, or those who have remembered, to put on a “food and /or drink” stall, to try to find time to get around all the other stands to try and get some food and drink. Come to think of it, along with the VGC AGM the only competitive event of the two weeks. At the end of the evening, after energetic dancing and the consumption of an unhealthy mixture of different kinds of alcohol and food in was perhaps surprising that no ambulances were required. In fact the only serious problem had occurred earlier in the day when two German pilots sampled mushrooms they had picked on the airfield, followed by an excursion to a French hospital. Just as well, for they may have been considering serving up mushroom omelettes in the evening.
“Vintage Kiwi’s” participation in the evening had started earlier in the week when our “T” shirts went on sale. Three days later our stock of 50 had been sold and anyone wearing one on the night was awarded a genuine NZ Kiwi Fruit. This contrasted with our food offering of a plate of cold lamb salad, hence the title of this piece. The wine however was NZ “White Cloud” which to many, particularly the French, was a first experience as NZ wines are rare on supermarket shelves in Europe. Interestingly they are more easily found a cheaper prices from or favoured wine merchants, the cross channel ferries. Presumably it travels well.
As the VGC AGM has already been mentioned, perhaps somewhat critically it should be said that after 33 years no one should have been be surprised if adjustments were needed. It was resolved at the AGM, after many months of almost civil war, a war not clearly understood by the majority of non English speaking members, that the VGC was an International Club, not a British Club with international members. However this welcome result still leaves problems as all national VGC clubs, just like “Vintage Kiwi” has a vast majority of members who are not also members of the VGC. The result being that the person representing the International VGC members of their country may not be authorised by the non VGC members of their club. If this sounds very confusing think how hard it must be for a Polish or French VGC member who does not speak English. No wonder the UN has problems.
Enough of gliding politics, the “colour centre pages” of the next issue of VK News will feature the gliders at the rallies that ranged from a large French flying wing, the Phoenix the first successful plastic glider, damn them, the 11m span Hutter and many pre war and wartime built gliders. The most noticeable feature of virtually all the gliders was the high standard of restoration, in many cases far better than the original work. It is this care that leads to gliders from the 30’s and 40’s still being in the air, long may they continue. Whilst the value of some gliders, historic or ones with gull wings for example are increasing, quite considerably in some cases, others such as Ka8’s and Ka6’s are falling, and some gliders are even being given away.
The doubling of insurance rates in Europe, plus the increasing capital cost of new gliders may soon restore the market for the older machines and this could increase the trend towards professional, as opposed to owner, restoration. The Poles, in addition to other ex eastern bloc countries, are cornering the market in restoring gliders, not only vintage but also gliders in current gliding club use. It is a pity that the current low cost of old gliders, with few exceptions, does not give us the chance of repeating with gliders, NZ’s world reputation for war bird and vintage power restoration.
