Another first for the team, pilot Ian Gallacher was summoned by the British Gliding Association (BGA) to escort their office stalwart Liz Pike to the Queens Garden Party at Buckingham Palace, London.

Ian and Liz had a great afternoon at the Palace and Gardens in perfect weather, but avoided the stampede to meet the Royals in person. They did get to see Queen Elizabeth II, The Duke of Edinburgh, Prince Charles, Prince Henry and the Countess of Wessex greeting many of the guests however.

At a typical Buckingham Palace garden party, around 27,000 cups of tea, 20,000 sandwiches and 20,000 slices of cake are consumed, with Some 400 waiting staff involved in the serving. Ian did his best to make a dent in the supplies.

Thank you to the BGA and Liz Pike for the invitation.

The last week in June brought a Spanish Plume of hot air up from the Continent and some of the hottest temperatures in the Midlands since 2006. As the mercury hit 30C, Baxterley, like many other venues across southern England was having a party.

The GliderFX team converged on the farm strip with new ferry pilot Paul Haldnall towing Ian Gallacher in the Fox. The airfield is not large, and it seemed every square inch was packed with either planes or people.

Paul Moslin opened the ‘Wings and Wheels’ airshow with a banner “WELCOME TO BAXTERLEY AIRSHOW 2011” and towed Ian in the Fox later in the day for the GliderFX Display.
Other highlights of the day included the Tiger Moth Diamond Seven and Helen Tempest wingwalking in a Union Jack leotard.

Thanks must go to Ken Broomfield for organizing the event and to Paul Johnson for ferrying the banner and smoke oil for us.

GliderFX were invited to the Wrekin Model show at Weston Park, with its picturesque seventeenth century house set in 1000 acres of Capability Brown parkland, just north of Cosford. The park is home to the Midland game fair, the V-music festival and the Model show, now in its 20th year.

A short sloping runway is prepared between the trees that enabled the team to operate from the site. The strong winds forecast for the Fathers Day weekend reduced the fly-in aircraft, but fortunately the expected rain was limited to a few showers.

Ian Gallacher started the display by towing “WELCOME TO WESTON PARK AIRSHOW 2011”. He worked with Commentator Dave Bishop to talk through the banner tow. Ian then swapped to the Fox glider, towed by Paul Moslin for the glider display, followed by Richard Grace’s Pitts Pair.

The model show is one of the biggest in the country and attracts some top model pilots. Some of the most impressive models included the carbon Opus glider, capable of incredible square cornered loops and tumbles. Also flying was an Me262 model, that looked and sounded like a real vintage jet.

Ali Machinchy had his enormous half scale (7m wingspan) Paritech Fox fitted with JetCat turbine and achieved a UK first with Guy Westgate by displaying some coordinated manoeuvres with the full sized glider during the display on Sunday.

Thanks as always to Steve Bishop and his team for the invitation, and Paul Moslin for rescuing the weekend by flying the Pawnee at late notice. Also the RAFGSA at Cosford for the help with logistics including Paul Holdnall who helped fix the Fox’s smoke wiring gremlin.

GliderFX were joined by the SWIP Team for a very special private display inside controlled airspace alongside London City Airport on Wednesday evening. Jon Gowdy, Peter Wells and Guy Westgate provided a rare 3-ship display for executives and guests of the sportswear company Adidas, who were dining on a luxury barge on the River Thames.

We provided a spectacular sunset show to draw 3-lines of smoke across London to symbolise the Adidas logo with a pyro climax from the Twisters of the SWIP team. We flew to Adidas’ new advert theme, Civilization by Justice and a version of Katy Perry’s Firework.

The flight was our most complicated and challenging display to-date, both in the planning and execution.

We negotiated a photographic sortie earlier in the day with the cooperation of the National Air Traffic Services (NATS) and Thames Radar and have a load of people to thank for making the whole day work, not least photo plane pilot Brendan O’Brien, photographer Paul ‘Dangerous’ Johnson, CAA display inspector Matthew Hill, Jon Buckler from NATS, Martin Garside of the Port Authority and Rachel Gould for the vision that we could provide something special.

The pyro display was performed above 1000ft and the brilliant pyrotechnics could be seen from many miles and a few videos have made it onto youtube with claims of strange meteorites, comets and ‘UFOs’. One shaky video filmed over Stratford went viral, boosted by several UFO forums with over 30,000 hits in the first week.