It was my Dad who got me started in all this flying stuff … spending wonderful hours up on the N Yorkshire moors flying gliders and learning the skills of what actually makes things fly and how to make the best use of the windsock without power to assist.

Post his passing a few years ago we had the awful job of sifting through hundreds of his models.. he was an avid builder .. balsa, tissue paper, knives and pins .. all to make ever more intersting models.

He would often go for the more esoteric and different and more challenging models and loved the construction that had to be applied to make beautiful gull or multi cambered wings.

These would be test flown near home usually school playing fields in Stockton where we lived but these were more suited to powered models which I did more of, complementing Dads gliders and rubber powered beauties

Countless times id be holding the body of a fragile rubber model as he, dowel in mouth, counted the turns as he wound his old drill mandrill to x 100 turns … he starting about 20′ from me and slowly walking towards me as the rubber contorted itself into the fragile tissue covered body. The dowel would then be used to pin the front in place ..hoping that (like sometimes) one strand of the rubber wouldnt give and zip through the body shattering every panel !

Then, the statutory pull of some grass tufts to throw into the air to check the wind and launch … the recovery team (me) thinking where is this one going to land 🤔

Of the models we retained ive finally got around to ordering new tissue, dope and balsa cement to part repair I dont want to lose the original aged covering so im only going to ‘hole patch’ for now.

With the aid of some local friends and the Suffolk model flying group who I met up with at Monewdon, ive managed to get one radio control set working ..so can have tudder, elevator and aileron for this amazing aircraft.

Once its been test flown..it wil be a hop up to the North York moors to fly off where it used to be