Here in England the easing of the lockdown on 15th May enabled solo/same family flying, principally to enable pilots to keep current/recent. This has given the market its first real boost this year with one envelope selling and several smaller items leaving the List including the Barnes bottom end, a fan, the inflation mat advertised last month and a scoop.
New this issue is a complete Cameron Z-105 G-DRPO and another batch of newly catalogued ‘finds’ from the Zebedee barn. These include headsets, a repaired 5hp fan cage, basket covers (now listed in tabular form), a Terra TRT250 Mode A/C transponder (lacking an aerial and not test for many years), some envelope bags and a nice Bombard poster showing one of the society’s famous ‘flower power’ balloons. Over the years Zebedee has accumulated a stash of ‘retrieve radios’ – Pye Westminsters, Philips MX290 series etc – usually fixed on 2 or 3 set (25khz) frequencies. Clearly there is little demand for these in EASA land but if you use them overseas and need a spares source then this could be it – see R143 in the Zebedee Radio section. We have given a guide price but are open to offers ….!
Finally we have to report the death of Peter Langford on 24th May. Peter goes back to the earliest days in modern British ballooning, as a member of the London Balloon Club, formed mainly from glider pilots from the London Gliding Club at Dunstable. He gained his licence in 1969 and was an early instructor and balloon inspector, becoming Chairman of the Tech Committee later. He will be remembered for flying one of the early commercial balloons “Esso” G-AZSP and rates as Zebedee’s first ‘commercial’ customer when we made a trailer cover for him in 1972! After a long stint on the commercial circuit Peter took full advantage of the UK CPL (Balloons) introduced in 1989 and worked many years in Kenya flying over 9000 passengers over the Masai Mara. He used to comment that most people in the UK worked “9 to 5” but my hours are “5 to 9 – the rest of the day is mine”.
As a 1970s member of the main BBAC committee your scribes recall him being given the task of ‘divi-ing’ the bill at the much needed post meeting visit to a London eatery. It seemed to be a complicated task depending on who ate/drank what, but the end result of Peter’s deliberation was always accepted without question!
Condolences to Diane. Peter was one of our sport’s characters and will be fondly remembered.