That’s me on the Grasshopper BTW 😉

Excellent meeting, with loads of fun.

Lasham is only a hour+half from me so I thought I’d go an have a look
I was lurking around the launchpoint mid day on the final saturday and saw the Grashopper being winched launched
On the light nylon cable rather than the heavier steel one.

Had a look round the new vintage hanger on the far side of the airfield.

I’ve just returned to this thread to read the recent posts……

From my recollections
In the mid 1990’s this T21 was indeeed operated by the Enstone vintage gliding group as I would call them: I’m not sure they had an official title.
They operated from the North side of the A/F, with the Enstone Eagles Gliding Club (EEGC) operating on the south and the power flying/microlights etc using the tarmac runway. (it did get busy when everyone was on approach at once from different circuits to various parallel runways/strips)

This T21/EVGG was totally separate from the BGA club the EEGC.

The EVGG was a non BGA club and members of the EEGC were warned off taking flights in the T21 with the EVGG as they were a non BGA club and the T21 would not have had a BGA CofA and its insurance position was uncertain. I’m not sure at that time what the legal position was.

The Vintage group disbanded (probably because the winch packed up!) and the T21 became part of the EEGC – now with a proper CofA/insurance. As I’ve previously stated although always a private owned aircraft, it was then allowed to be flown by club members provided P1 was an instructor (full Cat or Ass Cat only – Not air-ex)
The owners were always members of the EEGC even when they flew in this T21 group. (I’m trying hard not to quote names in an open forum!)

As regards the Bristol Freighter – I well remember its fate when it swung on takeoff and ended up ‘parked’ sideways on in the middle of the EEGC’s grass strip to the LHS of the runway………. a wreck.

PS I’ve had a look and it appears I don’t have any half decent pictures of the T21 at Enstone – sorry.

The Ex-RAF images are at English Heritage at Swindon.
Some of the stuff is very high quality flow at low level (3000 ft I think) – suitable to making out boundaries,footpaths even people. Others are more general done from 36000ft
Some areas have multiple coverage – some less so: luck of the draw as one says.

More interesting actually are the ex-Luftwaffe aerial survey of the UK done in preparation for the invasion of the UK.
They are interesting because they record effectively pre-war land use in the UK: woods/fields etc and are of great interest to historians, archeologists, geographers etc.
Oliver Rackam’s well known book the “History of the countryside” has several images from them in it detailed changes in East Anglia (woods etc dissapearing)

Unfortuntely they are not in the UK……
All the German photo images were found and captured by the US army and they half inched the lot (just in case they wanted to invade the UK I suppose)
They are now in the US National Archives in Maryland as I recall and are referred to as the GX prints. I think there are something like 1.5m prints covering all German flown photo-recce missions in the world.
I did many years ago speak to E.Heritage about getting them over to the UK en mass but they said there was very little chance of that happening.

I have again many years ago (at great expense and even more effort) got a copy of the Luftwaffe image of my locality from the US archives
The quality is really superb, done with a huge plate camera so my image print turned out as 2ft by 2ft: though it does go very dark if not black towards the edges. I guess other images might be of variable quality and possibly obscured with cloud – bearing in mind they were being shot at while doing it!