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A little BIT OF CLUB HISTORY
(I got this fascinating story through the email the other day - does anyone remember David?)
Dear Mike
I was browsing the internet the other day and came across your website. Now, that might not be very significant – except for the fact that it took me back some 39 years and I had better explain that I was one of the founder members of the Club.
It happened quite by chance, really. The year was 1967 and some friends and I had had permission to fly model aircraft on the Stanpit field in Christchurch. As we were flying one day, a man approached us and took a great interest in what we were doing. He turned out to be ‘Rip’ Rippon, who had founded the model aircraft company, Ripmax, ‘Rip’ (and I cannot now remember his first name) was a fascinating character, who had been building and flying model aircraft when Bleriot flew the Channel. Of course, we were all very interested in our new friend and Rip showed us several models that he was building. One of these was a superbly-detailed flying scale model of Bleriot’s monoplane.
Shortly after this chance meeting, Mr Rippon and I founded the Christchurch and District Model Flying Club and held meetings once a week in Stanpit village hall. Most of the members were 6th form pupils from Bournemouth School. Mr Rippon was Chairman and I was the Hon. Sec. Winter meetings often consisted of design and build competitions or round-the-pole flying and summer events were very modest affairs – usually placating irate golfers who could not see why they should not have the whole field to themselves.
I left the Club in 1968 to go up to University and lost touch with the members. I never flew a model aircraft again and never knew what happened to Mr Rippon who was, by then, a lively man in his 80s. I have, somewhere, a 1967 cutting from the Bournemouth Evening Echo about Mr Rippon and the activities of the Club.
The attached pictures are not of very good quality: I must find a decent scanner. One shows Chris Challenger on the left– who went on to study at the College of Air Training at Cranwell – and me engaged in a Club raffle. (Did I really dress like that? How embarrassing!) The second shows a rather posed shot of us refuelling ‘The Digger’, a control-line trainer that I designed. I think the plans appeared in Aeromodeller. It gained its name from being able to nose-dive into the ground without suffering harm. Phil White, who is holding the model, on the right, and I, met up quite by chance at University College London in 1973, when I was on a postgraduate course there.
I am really pleased to find the Club flourishing and with its own website. Do give my regards to the members.
Best wishes,
David James
(so it’s our 40th anniversary in 2007 - Ed)
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