Yeah well, the Blanik’s very nice but has always been prone to AD’s. This one will cost you 8-10K euros to rectify, and with most Blanik’s being high-timed (3000+ hours) combined with their low fatigue lifetime and low prices (4-8K) it’s just not worth it. I have seen grounded ones for sale recently for 800-1000 Euros including instruments, belts, hooks, the whole lot.

http://www.caa.co.uk/docs/HistoricalMaterial/G-ALPU.pdf

The G-marks were briefly mandatory for gliders circa 1949, I believe. They were only carried for a year or 2, 3 it seems, but most of the registrations were not cancelled until the sixties. Happy to be corrected. Our T21 also flew with marks like this briefly. It is however rare to find them underneath the paint. Usually these gliders have been reskinned long since… It may have lain dormant for quite some time!

PS: copies of the original BGA-maintenance documents are still available, probably also for this glider (a wealth of information!). The BGA used to have them, but I believe the ones not requested by their owners got passed on to the VGC recently for their archives?

This type was built in small numbers on a mountain top factory in Poland. Several were license-built in various countries. The one in the picture was built in The Netherlands.

It is actually a Pander D (s/n 11) that was built by H. Pander & Zonen (the factory in The Hague, Netherlands that is famous for its designer furniture) in 1924. In July 1926 it was lent to the French dealership of Pander by the factory for six months but never returned. The dealers in question seem to have claimed it as their own design, probably to further French sales of a ‘French’ product. It was broken up sometime after 1928.

Here’s a new one. Sans moteur.

Recommended reading on the making of the movie: ‘Delta Papa’, by Derek Piggott, one of the pilots who had his share of interesting experiences during filming.