Six years ago a change to how the Tutors operated at RAF Cosford made the concurrent flying of RAF powered aircraft and gliders no longer viable; the opportunity to glide at RAF Cosford had become restrictive. This impacted upon, not least, the number of flying days, the volume of students and the opportunities for instructors to maintain their ratings. Both operationally and financially the viability of the Club looked less than secure in the longer term. The challenge was to find a new home for the club and, after a review of a number of possible locations in the Midlands, it was decided that the best interests of the club lay in relocation to RAF Shawbury,

After much work by our project team, the RAFGSA and the staff of RAF Shawbury, and in particular by Flt Lt Kathy Cooke, our fly-in arrival at RAF Shawbury took place on 20 December 2020; it is still fresh in the memory.

With Norm having taken over Hangar 4 and found the keys…..

…..the fly in was preceded by the ground move of essential equipment and stores on 5 Dec 20. In truth we were not sad to leave the damp, wet conditions of our 1938 vintage, grass covered Type 'E' Aircraft Storage Shed at Cosford with the perpetual damp affecting the aircraft avionics and the ever-present and increasing threat of concrete debris falling from the hangar arches on to the aircraft.

We swapped those conditions for some superb facilities in Hangar 4 at RAF Shawbury

Sat 12 Dec 20 marked the last day of flying for the Wrekin Gliding Club (WGC) at RAF Cosford. The crisp bright December day saw an excellent turnout by members for this last day of flying, kindly marked by a parade of Jaguars that had been parked outside Cosford’s Hangar 4 – a thoughtful and much appreciated gesture.

Our own tug WG had been undergoing repair for over a year and had only just returned to Cosford. So, the day had started with the repatriation of Kestrel’s tug GA to Odiham, the loan having enabled the club to maintain aero-tow currency, essential for the fly-in to Shawbury.

With a strong headwind the return from Odiham to Cosford of Alan Swan and Colin Haynes in our own WG took longer than planned and it was with much anticipation that we awaited our first aero-tows in over a year with our much higher powered WG. It was a wonderful final day of flying for the WGC at Cosford. and with eager anticipation, we awaited a weather window to fly-in to RAF Shawbury.

20 Dec 20 and flying in post-Covid conditions, after days of heavy rain we made the most of a short weather window to fly in our RAFGSA fleet from RAF Cosford to RAF Shawbury. Norm was duty tug pilot and our Astir (R66) piloted by Colin was the first aircraft to arrive.

Our ASK21 (R22) was next and having dropped off the tow, arrived without event.

The last aircraft to bid a fond farewell after 54 years at RAF Cosford……

……was our old ASK13 (R38) piloted by Nigel with Willy Dean in the back seat and they fared less well. With a large rain cloud between them and Shawbury, they were circling over the A5 near Shrewsbury waiting for the rain to pass when Norm in the tug stuck the nose down and tried to dive under the cloud. Misjudging it, both tug and K13 entered cloud at which point Nigel released.

R38 emerged from the cloud in haste at VNE (108kts) heading in the wrong direction. Will pointed out Shawbury to Nigel, the bright sunshine lighting up Shawbury's wet runways like a beacon, at which stage they started to select options, on what was to be a long final glide, for a field landing in one of the lakes (AKA fields!) below. And in a scene reminiscent of MASH, with everyone on the ground looking in the wrong direction, we eventually caught sight of them just as Will gave a cheery wave from the back seat as they executed a well-judged plop over the airfield boundary!

Our RAFGSA fleet had arrived and joined the private owners gliders that had moved by road the day before.!

The club is firmly established as part of the RAF Shawbury family and, in the subsequent 5 years following our arrival, we have gone from strength to strength. It's been wonderful to see increases in the fleet, the number of flights, and the number of members.

Except for any effects of COVID lockdowns, everything boomed straight after we moved to Shawbury and a couple of important trends became evident.

Firstly, a recognition of the wider impact our club is providing. The glory days of the 60s to 90s saw large numbers of students in training at RAF Cosford take up gliding, a valuable introduction to flight as they moved on to their stations. However, as the WGC’s flying programme becoming more constrained, together with the beginnings of the impact of social media, many potential students went elsewhere and numbers died away. Indeed, many thought that the WGC was a civilian club not linked to RAF Cosford.. Now we see increasing number of young personnel flying with us many of whom, on posting, go on to fly with other RAFGSA gliding clubs.

Particularly gratifying has been the number who have flown solo – no mean achievement. Well done to all of them. Sadly, there were no solo pilots in 2025, operating off the grass this year has been challenging.

We have a steady stream of new students looking to learn to fly due to our prime position at Shawbury. It's wonderful to see that, despite our distance from Cosford, we now have a significantly higher number of personnel based at RAF Cosford travelling to join us each weekend than we did when we were based at Cosford.

Our success in getting these young folk into the air has been the RAF Charitable Fund sponsored Mechanics Endowment Fund (MEF) gliding scholarship programme. The programme includes nine training flights to 2,000ft, an aerobatics flight to 4,000ft that allows students to experience the g-forces on the body and airframe, and 60 minutes of flying training in a motor glider – and all for a £30 membership fee. Further funding is then available via the RAFGSA Go Solo Scholarship scheme to students who wish to continue to solo pilot standard. We're breaking through the mobile phones, laptops and games consoles!

Our 100th MEF gliding scholarship student took to the air on 3 August this year, a fantastic achievement, and with a crew comprising AR Becky Hall and instructor AR Brad Lefley-Kemp, both of whom are RAF Cosford trainees– brilliant!😍🤩

Secondly, the average age of our members has decreased significantly, showing that our club is inspiring and fostering the next generation of our sport. With many instructors and inspectors dating from the glory days approaching or already past retirement, this is critical to ensure the longevity of our club and our sport, and the impact that we're seeing. It is also encouraging to see that we have a number of younger instructors making their way through the system.

During the past 5 years we have welcomed many visitors some of whom flew with us, others who passed by ……

……and some who, quite unexpectedly and completely unannounced, dropped in for a chat!

***“Err, is this Sleap?”No mate, it’s Shawbury”***

RAF Shawbury has been a wonderful station to us, working with us to achieve practical solutions even when the options seemed limited. While this milestone is merely another day in the operation of RSGC, it proves the strength and longevity in our presence at Shawbury. There was a lot of speculation about how the club would fare at Shawbury, after turning its back on 54 years of history at Cosford. A lot of people doubted that it would work out well. However, we've certainly proved them wrong!

And now we are looking to consolidate our future:

We aim to upgrade our simulator to provide a more immersive experience.

We can all see that an aero-tow only operation has a slow launch rate. Therefore, it would be nice to think that at some stage we could reintroduce winch launching, a skill that we are having to visit Seighford and The Mynd in order to maintain currency.

Now that the ASK18 has left the fleet we could support a second single seat aircraft in the fleet, and an aircraft with a higher performance than the Astir.

It would be super to think that with the continued support of the RAF Charitable Fund, we would fly our 200th MEF gliding scholarship student at RAF Shawbury.

We are going to explore the opportunity to provide aero-tow training to other local gliding clubs.

And with three aerobatic instructors in the club, one of whom has been selected for the British Aerobatics team for the World Championships in Fayence, France in 2026, we aim to become a centre of excellence for RAFGSA aerobatics training and also to offer aerobatics training to other clubs

Despite the number of Oic’s that the CFI has seen pass through🤣🤣, the club is now alive, thriving, creating impact and resuming the legacy established during the glory days of WGC. Long may this continue as we expose the next generation of young service personnel to the delights of gliding.

Finally, many thanks to everyone involved who has helped to make RSGC such a success at RAF Shawbury