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Written by Cliff Paget   
Tuesday, 10 March 2009 05:58

My dad, Charles Barry Paget, was the Chairman of the Flying Club from more or less 1953 until 1962 and also its senior flying instructor for many years when my brothers Ian, Mike and I were young. I remember with amazement the freedom those pilots had in those days, in particular when it came to air rally’s.

One event they held was the ‘elopement’ ceremony. It involved a young couple in love, weaving down the runway in an open sports car as they fled from her father, who did not appreciate their affair, as he chased them in the Club Piper Aircraft at low level ‘bombing’ them, in the form of brown paper bags filled with flour. My Dad was usually the angry father and I was often his bomber.

I can’t see insurance companies allowing this to happen today. Also there was the ‘great air race’ where all the competing aircraft were handicapped and took off at different times and had to race a course which took in the various land marks, one of which was the high water tower at Woodlands. Again this all took place at very low altitude and I can recall being a passenger in the plane flow by my Dad as the plane banked hard round and just above this tower and seeing planes very close behind and in front of us trying to overtake. Those were the days. I seem to recall that Harold Cartmell and Norman Sutherland (all engineers) were also members at that time.

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