The author landing his Skylark at Lake Station.
Ian Dunkley
Last issue we looked at the Vintage Kiwi and asked what it is. The answer was, “A Living Flying Museum”. In this report Ian Dunkley looks at the questions which indirectly lead from that question. There are three. What is Vintage, what is Classic, and probably why do we want a museum anyway? I will ignore the last question. If you don’t know the answer you are obviously reading the wrong article, move on to some competition results or a report on a new sailplane you can’t afford. Overseas the commonly accepted definition for vintage is any glider designed before 1955. Classics are pre-1975 designs. No one gets too uptight about either of these definitions, anything interesting goes. That is typical of the vintage world; flying is fun. The only protests at an international meeting generally relate to the number of toilets, the launch queue or warm beer. In New Zealand, we class anything made primarily of wood as “vintage” but stick to the pre-1975 definition of “classic”. This effectively means early
An early gliding scene we would like to re-create 40
April 2008
plastic. Metal, a gliding perversion, is tolerated wherever it fits. Why are we different? For the very simple reason that we have not been careful with our old gliders. We have crashed them and swept away the remains, left them rotting in trailers, or even forgotten where we left them. If we stuck to “designed pre-1955”, we would have to hold memorial services instead of vintage rallies. Among the younger generation of pilots there is a misconception that old gliders, lacking modern performance and without the aid of today’s instrumentation, are incapable of significant flights. This is an insult to those who flew them. Never forget that diamonds, wave and cu-nim climbs, and far longer flights than most of us make today, were being made pre-war. It is the pilots
Vintage line up at Taupo Rally
Photo Rob Benton
VINTAGE & CLASSIC
