Richmond Gliding Club

It is with great sadness that I have to inform you all that long time glider pilot & club member Athol Holtham passed away this morning, he was 91. Athol would be known to Victorian & NSW members having a long involvement with gliding and the maintenance of wooden gliders. He rebuilt Cobra 15 VH-GHW after it was destroyed in a landing accident with it still being active today, he was a magician with wood. Athol finished his flying career with RAAF Richmond Gliding Club.

To his wife Liz and family, I’d like to express my sincere condolences.

Update 15OCT24

Athol and Liz had discussed plans and in accordance with his wishes there will be no service for his passing, he is being privately cremated. Please take a moment to remember him and maybe have a drink in his honour, I think he'd like that.

Good speed Athol, thanks for everything.

Phil

Hi all, sadly RAAF Richmond Gliding Club has come to an end. I won't go into detail as to why but the last remaining RAAF welfare gliding club in Australia will no longer be operating from this point forward. Thank you to those that have contributed to the clubs operations over the years. it has been a privilege to operate from RAAF Richmond and fly in the Hawkesbury airspace.

Good luck, and for those that fly fly safe.

A great days flying for the club yesterday with plenty of lift around for everyone to enjoy. It was very busy on the radio all day with a number of visitors throughout the day including the Roulettes who were in town to support the Bathurst weekend. Thanks all for your efforts.

We are operating today.

Hi all,

A lovely early spring days flying for Ben & Tim with Andre & myself as instructors. Everyone had a thermal flight with 4000 being easily achieved from release which made the training flights easy to manage. Darin flew TGN for the day and we were all done by 3pm after an 8:30 start.

Thanks all for your efforts.

Phil

We are operating off the grass tomorrow, finally!

Some photos from the end of January

https://vimeo.com/684954945?ref=fb-share&fbclid=IwAR0QUWL6DgR-SgE6GyIDJgSPZIrjn00-41V5wtm3bkOzh_qSNhWIHlMt2N4

RIP Ingo Renner

Legend of Australian gliding

The Bearhawk, VH-TGN is at Narromine for the week helping with the NSW comps. It is visible on Flight Radar24 now, Day 1 of the comps.

Live Flight Tracker - Real-Time Flight Tracker Map | Flightradar24 View flight on Flightradar24

All the photos from Saturday

Saturday 30 Oct was a great day for RAAFRGC and CFI Paul Tridgell with the first areotow behind the new build Bearhawk VH-TGN.

This has been a massive effort to get the aircraft to this point, there is more testing to come before the club can recommence normal operations but Saturday saw the first aerotow operations at Richmond since the loss of VH-UPS on December 1 2019.

Congratulations and well done to Paul, John and all who have helped make this happen.

More photos to come.

The first launch.

After an enforced break in flying, the Bearhawk is in the circuit continuing its test flying.

12 months ago, seems like forever. Hopefully we'll be back in the air soon.

Hi all,

Obviously things are quite for the club with the current covid lock down restrictions. We'll soon need to start some maintenance activities on the club gliders to cover the annual form 2 requirements, we'll let you know when this starts if you are interested in helping out.

On another note, the current VGC News mag arrived from the UK today, one of my photos on the cover.

Cheers

Phil

Hi all,
It has finally happened, VH-TGN Bearhawk completed it's first flight Friday with Bill Bartlett at the controls & Paul Tridgell as scribe. Latter in the day Bill & John Trazise spent some time in the circuit.
Congratulations to Paul, John and Darin for the mammoth effort in getting this new build a/c to flight and soon as RAAFRGC new tug.
Cheers
Phil

From the USA, similar configuration to Paul's Bearhawk which had it's first engine run yesterday.

BEARHAWK LIFE ~ FIRST FLIGHT BEARHAWK - We did it! This video series covers my progress building (and eventually flying) the Bearhawk 4 Place. See my "About This Channel" here: https:...

The mighty Cobra