Thursday 22 May 2014

Usk - Sunday 18th May 2014 - Astir gliders

The airfield at Usk is a couple of miles to the north east of the town of Usk, Monmouthshire in south Wales.

The South Wales Gliding Club is based here with a number of two seat trainers plus some K8 single seaters too.

As with many gliding airfields a lot of the based gliders reside in metal glider trailers.

A quick stop mid morning on a beautiful early summers day found the club busy preparing for a days flying. In addition a pair of single seat Astir gliders were being prepared for flight beside the row of glider trailers.


G-DEOD is a Grob G102 Astir CS77 built in 1977 with c/n 1614. The Astir was a very succesful Club Standard glider with over 1,200 examples being built by Grob in Germany of which approx 250 were of the CS77 version. This example was originally registered on the BGA register as "BGA 2859" before becoming "G-DEOD" in June 2008.





G-DDKX is a Grob G102 Astir CS built in 1976 with c/n 1331 - the original production version of the G102, over 500 of this version were built.  This Astir wears the competition code "353" on the tail.

Even after nearly 40 years there are currently 115 examples of the Grob G102 Astir series gliders on the UK CAA aircraft register. 


Click here for a web link to the South Wales Gliding Club




 Steve