Windrushers Gliding Club is a gliding club flying from Bicester Airfield, where it moved to from Little Rissington in 1956, later merging with the Royal Air Force Gliding & Soaring Association.
The club was reformed as a separate entity in July 2004 after the RAFGSA moved to RAF Halton. Within a year of reforming, it was hosting the UK Junior National Championship and its own Regional championship. Building on the strong backbone of experienced pilots and organisers in the club, it then hosted the Standard Class National Championships and the Regional championship the following year, an outstanding achievement for such a "new" club. The club is continually expanding and its regular Regional competition is proving very popular indeed, due to its geographical position, good soaring conditions and relative freedom from airspace restrictions.
The club has four dual-control two-seater ASK 13 gliders, a single seat Schempp-Hirth Discus, a single-seat Grob G-102 Astir, a single seat Schleicher K 8 and a Falke 2000 motor glider, while some generous individuals make available other two-seaters and single-seaters for club use. The club provides aerotow flights using the club's Pawnee or Robin DR400, with access to a privately owned Robin DR400 as well, but the main launch method used is winching. There are approximately 45 privately owned gliders based at Windrushers.
From April to September the club is open seven days a week with professional staff, and the rest of the year flies at weekends, Wednesdays and Fridays, and Bank Holidays, when volunteers organise the flying (as is common at most other British gliding clubs).
Currently two university gliding clubs operate under the Windrushers supervision - Oxford University Gliding Club and Cranfield University Gliding Club. A small number of students from University College London also fly from Windrushers, although they also maintain a presence at RAF Halton.
Windrushers Gliding club is a BGA approved Junior Gliding Centre.
Famous quotes containing the words gliding and/or club:
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Look’d up in perfect silence at the stars.”
—Walt Whitman (1819–1892)
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—Reinhold Niebuhr (1892–1971)