Bristol Wing is now a LAA Club reinforcing it's commitment to LAA and recreational aviation in the Bristol region.
Some very sad news. BAE Systems have announced the permanent closure of Filton at the end of 2012.
LAA Bristol Wing and Bristol Aero Club have decided to combine our monthly meetings.
We have moved our meeting date to the first Wednesday in the month to coincide with BAC's room bookings.
This has a number of advantages:
We expand our circle of friends and contacts. We have a greater combined attendance to justify speakers coming to talk to us. We get new ideas from BAC for speakers allowing us to cast our net further and visa versa. A number of wing members also fly with BAC so they get to go to both meetings at the same time. We can more easily plan joint fly outs.
We have moved to BAC's room 7 that is larger (up to 65) with more elbow room. Room 7 also has a fixed O/H projector on the ceiling and theatre style seating.
We will still have our own meeting for our AGM or anything else that needs to be separate.
We have moved our website to a new hosting company DataFlame.
You will have noticed our new website address www.bristol-wing.co.uk. Please bookmark this for future as the old site will disappear soon. Our thanks to Flyer internet for their kind and generous hosting of us over many years at no charge.
This new home gives us a lot more flexibility in what we do with our website. There is capability for a password protected members area. We could if we wish set up our own forum. The site will evolve and grow as we add content. A major change is to the popular newsletters section. Hope you like it.
Filton Airport has announced it will no longer operate on weekends with effect week beginning 2nd August 2010. This means life will be harder for our sister club that also meets at BAWA the Bristol Aero Club. Philip Green of BAC tells us they will be relocating their two aircraft to Kemble for weekends.
For pilots not flying from Filton this means any traffic services previously offered by Filton will now come direct from Bristol. Because Filton is closed it also means of course their ATZ collapses too. So anyone that previously used Filton will now call Bristol on 125.65 rather than Filton on 122.725.
Of course NATS Bristol are a great bunch of people and very GA friendly so to a certain extent one could argue south bound traffic will have less radio work to do to stay in contact.
After some excellent work by LAA,CAA and DGAC (French CAA) working together NPPL (SSEA) holders not just microlights can now fly to France without prior permission. The Wing would like to thank Roger and his team at LAA for their quiet diplomacy that has resulted in a super result. More on the LAA website
Our good friend Leo Marriott, Head of Air traffic at Filton and prolific author has retired from Filton ATC.