Glider Launching on Top of Dunstable Downs

Lovely photos, many thanks. In post 15 you can nearly see where i live. 16 is Doc Slaters photo of the Slingsby Gull 1.

Dave

More to follow when I have a spare moment.

Another one!

Another.

1 More.

And another

Another postcard from my collection depicting a scene from the London Gliding Club.

I too have a few photos of the Gliding Club and a couple of Totternhoe. I nearly went after the photo, but had spent a bit on other photos, so didnt go after it.

Spoke to my dad earlier today Shuttleworth broke there bungee rope when test flying the Eon Primary. So thats why they where after a new bungee rope.

Dave

Superb, this forum comes up trumps again.

G-ASEA, I bought the card for that amount and I had been after it for ages!

I now have around 600 Dunstable and district postcards, some of which depict the Downs and of course the gliding club and it’s gliders.

When a Primary is aerotowed behind a Cub, it will still have the glide angle of a brick…but from a higher altitude!

The registration was put on so it could fly in the International compertions at the Wasserkupe Germany 1937.

The same photo sold on ebay the other day for about £17.

dave

My grandad told me that he was paid, but maybe he did it for fun?

I have digitally scanned the postcard and you can make out AA as part of the registration which should hopefully help me approximate the date the image was shot?

Question, what was it registered and in such an out of sequence allocation?

In the past few years Shuttleworth have launched both their Eon Primary and the English Electric Wren using a bungee. The Eon looked to have a similar gliding angle to a brick but there didn’t seem to be a shortage of volunteer pilots willing to have a go. I am hoping that the Eon will get towed behind the cub at a display so that I can get a better idea of its true gliding performance.

The glider was built by Slingsby but was never given a type number, it was called the Buxton Hjodis after its designer G.M. (Mungo) Buxton. Its first flight was at Sutton Bank Yorkshire 27/5/1935. BGA No 242 G-GAAA, later registered BGA301. Sold to South Africa in 1938, fate unkown.

My Dad use to help with the bungee launching as a lad at Dunstable pre war but he was never paid.

Shuttleworth was after a Bungee rope for there EoN Primary (SG38).

Dave

Bungy launches are still carried out in a suitably brisk Westerly at the Midland Gliding Club on the Long Mynd.

You might be interested to know that bungy lauches were performed off the top of the Downs during the early 1970’s. Certainly when I witnessed it two gliders were being used a K13 and a T21 Sedburgh.

I can’t give you much more info than that, but from talking to other people present I believe at that point such launches were still conducted every couple of years…………

Does any one know of anywhere where they still cunduct bungy launches, or when the last such launches were?

Steve

Yes, it’s the Hjordis, built in 1934 and adopted by Philip Wills who flew it at the Wasserkuppe in 1937.
Named after a heroine in a Norse saga.

I think its a Hjordis made by Slingsby Sailplanes, and was the only one built

Ken