• About Us
  • Articles
  • Events and Visits
    • Social Gatherings
    • RAF Scampton
    • The Shard and the Emirates Air Line
    • Battle of Britain Bunker
    • AEG Visits Ken Wallis
    • South Yorkshire Aircraft Museum
    • Peter Twiss
    • Capt Eric 'Winkle' Brown >
      • Serendipity
      • Wellington Aviation Museum
      • The Dart Kitten
      • Heinkel 176 >
        • Accident Investigator
        • La Coupule
        • Bentley Priory
        • Sir George Cayley
        • Who really was the First to Fly?
        • Charlie Taylor and the Wright Brothers >
          • John Dunne's Uncapsizable Aeroplanes
          • Howard Pixton
          • Bleriot's Centenary
          • Who Won the Channel Prize?
          • Harriet Quimby
          • Australia's First
          • The RNAS in Belgium
          • Sidney Cotton
          • Balloon Bail Out
          • Frank T Courtney
          • Igor Sikorsky
          • Louis Strange
          • Navigator of the Southern Oceans >
            • Five Days to Egypt
            • Double Crossing of the R34
            • The RAF in Somalia
            • Fokker Goes Gliding
            • Airlift From Sulaymania
            • The Roaring (Early) Twenties
            • The 1923 Light Aeroplane Competition
            • The 1924 Two Seater Aeroplane Competition
            • Polar Flights
            • The Dole Air Race
            • Airlift from Kabul
            • Golden Age of Air Racing
            • The Gugnunc
            • The Comper Swift
            • Schneider Trophy
            • Piaggio Pegna Pc 7
            • Sir Francis Chichester
            • Wiley Post
            • The First Flight Over Everest
            • Balbo - Chicago Bound
            • Jean Batten
            • 1935 - 80th Anniversary
            • Arthur Edmond Clouston
            • The Ghost of Speke
            • RAF Distance Records
            • Steaming through the Skies
            • BailOut! Bail Out!
            • The Croydon - Its Timor Terminus
            • The Flying Flea
            • Amelia Earhart
            • Clouston and the Comet
            • Passengers in Wings
            • Corrigan and the Compass Conundrum
            • Alex Henshaw
            • Corsair Down
            • The Blackburn B-20
            • The Helping Hand
            • The Plots Thicken
            • A Sideways Look at the Battle of Britain
            • Tiger Tales
            • The One Who Did Get Away
            • Gliders at War
            • Hornet Moth to Freedom
            • A French Fighter Ace
            • Grrr-umman Wildcat
            • Wulf-pack Disintegrates
            • Beau Flies the Flag
            • Mental DR to Morocco
            • Signora Essere Buona
            • Don Berlin's Bitsa
            • Spitfire over Scapa
            • Might Have Beens
            • Surreptitiously to Sweden
            • Supermarine Stranraer
            • Transatlantic Tow
            • Frank Tilley - 617 Squadron
            • Runway in the Sky
            • Subaeronautical Tales
            • A Pathfinders' Memorial
            • Experiences of a PR Pilot
            • RAF Spilsby in 1945
            • Shoo Shoo (Shoo) Baby
            • Aleut Alert
            • Bob Hoover
            • Derek Piggott
            • Empire State Encounter
            • Early Days at Heathrow
            • The Bungee
            • Slingsby
            • Under the Bridge Fliers
            • A Blind Landing - Really Blind
            • Picking up the Pieces
            • Chuteless Survivors
            • Tom Hayhow
            • King's Cup 1952
            • Lockheed U-2
            • Boeing's Stratocruiser >
              • Boeing Strato-tanker
              • Zaunkoenig
              • DC-4 Incident Report
              • The Caspian Sea Monster
              • The Convair Sea Dart
              • Convair's Mighty B-36
              • The Canard - Its Rise and Fall and Rise
              • The Rutan Branch Approach
              • The Forgotten Air Race
              • The Magnificent Hercules
              • Gordon Vette
              • The 50th Anniversary of Human-Powered Flight
              • A Dip into My Photo Album >
                • Inflatable Aviation
                • Low, Slow and Don't Know
                • Animals in Aviation
                • Zeppelin
                • Brainfade over Brazil
            • Looping Ad Nauseam
            • Strage del Cermis
          • Soaring to the Stratosphere
      • FAST - Farnborough
      • Vintage Gliding Rally

Social gatherings - usually ballistic 

We hold regular social events, always with eating and drinking and various forms of competition.  The most fearsome is indoor skittles - sometimes referred to as 'flying cheeses' - where the missiles have their own ballistic qualities.  Resetting the skittles is not a job for the faint-hearted so these functions are allocated on a strict rota, to all competitors in turn.  It's known as 'being in the woodyard' and tests courage when avoiding ricochets.
So strong is the competition that there are trophies for the winners, the Will Hooper Trophy for the men and the Pat Finney Trophy for the ladies. That's the might sound like sex discrimination, but the rules of play apply equally to everyone . 

Picture
Picture
Picture
Picture
​​The year when President Paddy Weldon, who had introduced us to the game, was proud to win the Trophy.

Picture
Picture
Some of our members spent their careers building rockets.  Here they are able to recapture their youth.

Picture
Picture
Picture