Walmer Park Mall Glider Display

Written by Administrator Saturday, 10 October 2009 18:25

Static Glider Display Walmer Park Mall - 3 October 2009

The club has for some time now been looking at ways of making the residents of the Port Elizabeth and surrounding areas aware of the gliding activities at the Uitenhage airfield. A few months ago the club committee agreed to the concept of displaying a glider in the Walmer Park shopping mall.

The purpose of the static display was threefold:
Firstly to introduce the concept of gliding to the visitors to the mall, secondly to make them aware of the gliding activities at the Uitenhage airfield and thirdly to attract new members.

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It was decided that the display would take the following format:

1. The main attraction would be having a glider on display
2. A number of gliding videos would be shown continuously
3. Posters would be displayed explaining gliding
4. A competition would be run whereby 10 people would win a flight in a glider.

Entrants would be requested to give there contact details and indicate if they wanted to find our more about gliding. After much measuring and re-measuring it became apparent that it would be impossible to display the club’s Twin Astir in the space available. Fortunately Andrew Bester came to the rescue and offered his Salto for the display - it was an almost perfect fit.

Prior to the day of the display information flyers and competition entry forms were
printed and two advertisements were placed in a local newspaper. A duty roster was prepared for manning the display as well as setting up and dismantling the display. Thankfully there was no shortage of volunteers.

We arrived at the mall at about 06h45. The glider, still in the trailer, was pushed into the mall and rigged after which the rest of the display was set up. With the exception of the display boards (supplied by the mall) which arrived a little late, we were ready by 08h00.

The display, in particular the glider, attracted a lot of attention and was very well
supported. The most common questions were. “Where is the engine?”, “How does the glider get into the air?“, “How does the glider stay in the air?“, “Do you need a license to fly a glider? “, “How do you get a license?“ and “How did we get the glider into the mall?”.

It was also an absolute pleasure to see the excitement on the faces of the many young children who visited the display. Hopefully many of them will become members in years to come. We have drawn ten winners who will each be invited to have a free flight in the Twin Astir. We received requests from ninety-six visitors for more information on gliding and just over two hundred competition entry forms.

We will be contacting them in the near future, hopefully we can convert many of
them into members. All in all a very successful day. Many thanks to all the members who volunteered to assist on the day. Also a special word of thanks to the SSSA for their sponsorship and to Dave Mortimer for arranging to send down the posters for the display.

We should seriously consider having a similar display when next an airshow is held at FAPE.

The dates selected to give the winners of the competition their free air-experience flight are 8 and 15 November 2009 with five winners per day.