Team members Peter Wells and Paul Johnson (Flightline UK) joined other Leading figures from the UK aviation and airshow industry at Fairford in Gloucestershire this month to launch the British Air Display Association (BADA).

The association, which announced an initial membership of 82, aims to be the focal point for developing and encouraging safe practices as well as promoting the industry to those involved in staging airshows, including display pilots, organisers, and the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA).

The inaugural meeting saw the election of a committee to run the association.

GliderFX held its first training camp at Bicester this week.

Team members Ian Gallacher, Paul Moslin and Guy Westgate were put through a training course on banner towing by expert Simon Moores of ‘AirAds‘, and in turn Simon got to add “PA25 Pawnee” and “MDM-1 Fox” to his logbook and trained to fly our glider display aerotow profile.

The training camp culminated in a visit by George Duncan of the CAA, to see the new banner towing operation and upgrade our annual Display Authorisations (DA) for the 2011 season.

After setting up the banner letters and laying out the ropes, the hardest part of the banner tow is the banner pickup. Simon taught us some good techniques and with good teamwork, using ground crew to feedback height information we all aced the test with first time pickups and upgraded our DAs.

Although we can tow a banner of upto 35 letters, Simon recommended a short banner for our training and we settled on “GO GLIDING” to help advertise for Bicester.

A huge thanks must go to Alan Twig and Mike Petican at Bicester who let us fly our banner circuits alongside their busy glider operations and Terry Walsh who helped with our logistics.

The new Fox was also put through its paces and we showed George Duncan the glider display from the hot seat. The Fox flies very well, and we look forward to displaying it across the country this year.