LAA Strut News
Struts 4U by Anne Hughes
e’re heading towards mid-summer at the usual seemingly breakneck speed, as time does when we get older. In any other year our Strut calendar would be listing fly-ins and barbecues, as well as fly-outs up and down the UK and mainland Europe with our friends in the Belgian Strut. The events may sadly have all been cancelled or postponed, but thanks to modern technology and innovation, many Strut meetings have been held virtually via the likes of Zoom, with the added pleasure of being able to see countless close-ups of ‘do-it-yourself’ haircuts and rather unkempt beards, plus an insight into members’ tastes in décor. Mind you, The positivity of all has to be admired, and now that light aircraft can return to the air (in England and NI so far) some can enjoy seeing our world again from a loftier perspective. Our social events, sadly, will take a little longer to reinstate, though new ideas and thoughts have been zooming around for the last couple of months and new friendships have been made. In many ways a shared trauma of such magnitude puts focus on different areas of life and has brought about closer bonds in our LAA Strut and club family. Many of the Struts have been in touch to share their thoughts and experiences with us and I am delighted to be able to include a selection of that correspondence this month. From the Vale of York Strut, Chris Holliday writes, “While in lockdown, we have established our first Strut
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Above Ian Fraser awarding the trophy for Best Flight of the Year to Alex and Chris Allen of Aircraft Coverings, the UK agents for PolyFiber on behalf of Jon Goldenbaum who is looking on from our twined Strut in Flabob, California. Jon and his friends flew over from Flabob to Duxford and onto Europe with two Dakotas.
website to go along with our Facebook page. It includes contributions from Strut members as well as updates about events, trip reports, member profiles, safety related items, plus hints and tips (although we have yet to populate the latter). One of our Coaches, Alan Kilbride, has successfully delivered a licence validity extension webinar, which included both those needing a validity extension and also other pilots, and was a very interesting session with good safety messages. We have also repeated the Going Foreign: Part I seminar that we held at our February Strut meeting as a webinar. Alan is preparing webinars for Parts II / III to be delivered in the near future. Even though the prospect of resuming overseas flying is probably still a way off on the horizon just now, the webinar content is also helpful for planning those longer flights in the UK. It is possible that we may put the webinar recordings up on the new LAA YouTube channel, so they are accessible to a wider audience, but that’s a work in progress. Our website can be found at www.valeofyorkstrutlaa.wordpress.com Tony Razzell writes from the East Midlands Strut, “We have used Zoom very successfully for our April and May meetings and had the privilege of having Dodge Bailey speak to us on flying the DH88 Comet Racer at the Shuttleworth Collection for the May meeting. Our next meeting on Monday 8 June at 8pm, will be our AGM plus (I hope) some suitable additional entertainment. Email me for details at tonyrazzell2@gmail.com. You will be June 2020 | LIGHT AVIATION | 31
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