Old UK Gliding Magazines

+ +

THE DREAM These UK gliding magazines were the start of a 7 year scanning project that has evolved into a determination  to professionally scan all out of print UK gliding books and create an eBook library. The intention is that the BGA will have an accessible, catalogued hard copy gliding library and eventually the BGA website will host all the scanned UK gliding magazines and eBook library. Both magazines and eBooks will be searchable and freely available.

THE HISTORY. The scanning was done from a nearly complete set of UK gliding magazines which were given by the Redshaw family to The Lakes Gliding Club. The family has been involved in gliding since 1930. There are about 4 nearly complete sets that are known to be in existence, but they are not readily available to the flying world. A few of the Lakes set were missing . With the support of Wally Kahn, who holds the only known totally complete set and who kindly allowed access to his collection, all UK gliding magazines from 1930 to 2000 have now been scanned into searchable PDF format, some 700 magazines which started out as weekly and over time became bi-monthly.

 

Why did Peter start this mammoth magazine scanning task? Sadly a number of magazines went missing from the set held by the Lakes Gliding Club . Security was tightened but it was too late. What if there is a fire, the whole collection would have been lost. There is a tremendous amount of valuable information about gliding in both the UK and Overseas in these magazines and it should not be lost. The safest way to ensure retention, access to this information and history was to commit them to digital format. The PDF format has been chosen as Adobe Reader software is freely available and Adobe is an International reliable software source.

 

The magazines were scanned for free and judging from the number of magazine downloads that are being made, you obviously enjoy reading them. Hopefully you would like to contribute to the archive projects in exchange. The current one is the "Wally Kahn/BGA Book Collection" , the next one will be UK gliding ephemera, photos etc. Any contribution of any amount will be gratefully received and housed in a separate account with the Lakes GC, donations can be made easily and securely online. Just fill in the amount in the box below and click the donate button.

 

Would you like  a FREE SET OF MAGAZINES for personal use on your own computer, searchable, on a memory stick containing the 700 plus Old UK Gliding Magazines  from 1930 to 2000? Two levels are available, web resolution and high resolution. A donation of £200 gets the web resolution copy (6GB) and £500 gets the high resolution copy (15GB).

I would like to donate £ Thanks

This is a temporary home for these digital magazines. The BGA has agreed to host them on their Sailplane and Gliding website when they upgrade their website facility, make them easily searchable, freely available and retain them for posterity. When the archive is fully functional it is intended to keep all magazines in the digital archive with the exception of the last 5 years. A suitable keyword search and display format on the BGA website will probably emulate this site and/or the Flightglobal Archive website at  http://www.flightglobal.com/pdfarchive/index.html If you have any ideas on this please send them to Peter Redshaw.

 

THE MAGAZINES. The magazines are grouped by volume number or date and magazine title. 508 loaded so far. A keyword search cannot be done across all files from here but you can read and search the individual magazines. To search across all the current uploaded files go to the search facility on the Site Search Page. Over 700 magazines have been scanned including 108 VGC News magazines from 1973 to 2003. For security and posterity, the BGA and VGC have been given master digital copies of their respective magazines.

The first ever UK gliding magazine was "Sailplane and Glider" Sept 6th 1930, Vol 1 No 1

 

Volume 1

Volume 2

Volume 3

Volume 4

 

 

 

 
Volume 5 Volume 6 Volume 7 Volume 8
Volume 9 Volume 10 Volume 11 Volume 12

 

 

The war interrupted publication but commenced again with Volume 12 Feb 1944
Volume 13 Volume 14 Volume 15 Volume 16
Volume 17 Volume 18 Volume 19 Volume 20
Volume 21 Volume 22 Volume 23  

The magazines became bi-monthly Dec 1953

This is the last of the Sailplane and Glider magazines. The magazine was reborn as Sailplane & Gliding, today's magazine.

 There was a degree of competition, unhappiness and frustration in the gliding magazine market place which led to both Sailplane and Glider and Glider being merged into one by 1955. This was the birth of our current magazine Sailplane and Gliding

 

"Gliding" magazine started in 1950 as an organ of the BGA and fished in 1955 when it became Sailplane and Gliding absorbing Sailplane and Glider

 

Volume 1 Volume 2 Volume 3 Volume 4
Volume 5 Volume 6   Volume 6
This is the last of the Glider magazines. The magazine was reborn as Sailplane & Gliding, today's magazine.  

 

"Sailplane and Gliding" first issue was October 1955, immediately above right.

 

Volume 7 Volume 8 Volume 9 Volume 10
Volume 11 Volume 12 Volume 13 Volume 14
Volume 15 Volume 16 Volume 17 Volume 18
Volume 19 Volume 20 Volume 21 Volume 22
 
Volume 23 Volume 24 Volume 25 Volume 26

 

 

 

 
Volume 27 Volume 28 Volume 29 Volume 30

 

 

 

 
Volume 31 Volume 32 Volume 33 Volume 34

 

      

 

Vintage Glider Club, VGC News. The VGC started in 1973 at Husbands Bosworth. A Newsletter was initially produced which became the VGC News, a full blown magazine as the VGC grew in size.

These were scanned from the VGC News/Newsletters held by the VGC archive. Of the early Newsletters there are 25 which suggests 1 is missing as the numbering starts at 27. Anyone help? Further links and files will go on shortly.

 

1973 1974 1975 1976

 
1977 1978 1979 1980
1981 1982 1983 1984
1985 1986 1987 1988
1989 1990 1991 1992
1993 1994 1995 1996
1997 1998 1999 2000
2001 2002 2003 2004
The scanning of 2004 and later Newsletters or gathering of electronic publishers files of the Newsletters has been left with the VGC

 

"Soaring Pilot" was briefly produced in 1973. Only 4 magazines were issued.

 

 

In order to open the PDF documents, Adobe Reader (version 8 or later) will need to be installed on your PC. To download the latest copy of this software go to http://www.adobe.com/products/reader.html

An alternate and sometimes better free software for reading the PDF files is Foxit Reader, this is available at http://www.foxitsoftware.com/Secure_PDF_Reader Use Foxit Reader if Adobe is not opening the pictures properly.

 

Copyright is that of Peter Redshaw (who did the scanning) The British Gliding Association and The Vintage Glider Club (who between them own the original magazines). No use other than personal use should be made of these documents without written permission of the relevant parties. They are not to be amended or used on other websites.

 

Back to      Lakes GC Website         BGA Website         VGC Website     Site Search       "Wally Kahn/BGA Book Collection"      

 

Any problems let the Webmaster know.