Meetings and Minutes

The Royal Aero Club Trust has recently announced its annual bursary scheme for 2012.

In the past, there have been several successful applications from members of the British Model Flying Association and the Trust is actively inviting application from our members again in 2012.

For further details please click on the link: InitialBursaryPressRelease2012

Dales Club members had a shock farewell to one of its most valued flyers on 2nd November 2011. Barry was in the top flight at the club – literally, and was renowned for his impeccable landing prowess. So much so, that we marked each other on a scale of 1 – 10. Barry’s 9′s were hard to come by – 10 Barry’s was a rare axccomplishment. We will miss his rich comradeship, but at least we have his legacy to the club.
Ralph Darnborough

A scammer who over recent years targeted users of the BMFA Classified Adverts service on the BMFA website has been brought to justice at long last.

For details of the story please click here.

Derek’s involvement with aeromodelling began as a result of his interest in early television and his National Service training as a radio mechanic. He built his first single-channel radio control set in the late 1950′s and shortly after joined the Hull Area Radio Control Society which then became Beverley and District Model Aircraft Club. He soon became involved with teaching new members to fly and climbed up the examiner ladder to achieve Chief Examiner status.

The engineering side of aeromodelling soon led Derek to fitting out his workshop with machine tools. He built several multi-cylinder glow motors and then progressed on to machining gas turbines. The photograph shows him with his scratch-built Druine D31 Turbulent with a scaled down VW flat 4 cylinder motor which he also built.

Derek was Chairman of the Beverley club for many years and was made President in 1996. His other interests were music, he played saxophone in a dance band, archeology was a passion of his, and painting where his landscapes were much admired. Son, Tim, is now flying is models. Derek will be sadly missed.

The Royal Aero Club (RAeC) Trust and Ancestry.co.uk have launched a worldwide search to uncover missing images of over 200 pioneer aviators.

Family history enthusiasts and local history communities are being urged to help find the images which accompany a number of Aviators’ Certificates held in the Trust’s extensive archive (www.royalaeroclubcollection.org), which includes over 28,000 index records and 34 albums, or “volumes”, containing about 13,000 photographs of early aviators.

Like a modern passport, these certificates were given to pilots who, in the early days of the First World War, successfully completed their initial training through the Royal Aero Club before joining the Royal Flying Corps (RFC) or the Royal Naval Air Service (RNAS) for active service. The licence required the submission of two photographs, one of which was pasted into the licence; the other was retained by the Club.

“Unfortunately, Volume 4 is missing, so volunteers from the Royal Aero Club Trust are busy compiling a “virtual” replacement album, drawing on photographs from other sources,” explains Andrew Dawrant, a trustee of the Royal Aero Club Trust. “Thanks to Cross & Cockade, the First World War Historical Aviation Society, we now have replacement images in about two-thirds of the cases. But nearly 200 photographs are still missing.”

“We are urging any budding history sleuths, or anyone with an interest or family connection with the early days of flying to go to http://blogs.ancestry.com/uk/2011/08/08/help-find-the-missing-heroes-of-world-war-i/ or http://blogs.ancestry.com/uk/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/AeroClubTrust_Find-Missing-Heroes1.pdf and help us track these images down, whether they are from personal collections, school photos, newspapers or obituaries.

If you can provide a copy of one of these missing photographs, or if you have any ideas about where may be a good place to look, please email us at royalaeroclubgb@googlemail.com. It is important for us to fill in the gaps in these records, both to commemorate the lives of those brave pilots, and also to provide a complete historical record.”