"Sadown" at Sandown

A great days flying with friends a first in a long time, we flew back to Sandown to find a field with no radio and no welcome, a landing fee and a cupper in the portacabin was in stark contrast to Jazz in "The Aviator bar" and a great lunch surrounded by hundreds of flyers.

It seems if the locals are to be believed that the subdivition of the land and runway between Glen Collins and a company called Wharflands in part owned by David Mellor means that effectivly this airfield is missing its heart. That heart that Dick Steel had given it over the last 5 years now lies broken.

Did "The Aviator" have an accident, when it burnt to the ground? or was that a mishap, know to a few? We will never know for sure, but one thing that happened that night, the heart of Sandown airfield died.

"I am too busy living to think about dying.." Martin Bromage January 2010

Impressions of a PilotGary Claude Stoker
Flight is freedom in its purest form,To dance with the clouds which follow a storm;
To roll and glide, to wheel and spin,To feel the joy that swells within.
To leave the earth with its troubles and fly,And know the warmth of a clear spring sky;
Then back to earth at the end of the day,Released from the tensions which melted away.
Should my end come while I am in flight,Whether brightest day or darkest night;Spare me no pity and shrug off the pain,Secure in the knowledge that I'd do it again.
For each of us is created to die, And within me I know,I was born to fly.

High Flightby John Gillespie Magee
Oh I have slipped the surely bonds of earthand danced the skies on laughter silvered wings.Sunward I've climbed and joined the tumbling mirth of sun split cloudsand done a hundred things you have not dreamed of,wheeled and soared and swung high in the sunlit silence.
Hovering there I've chased the shouting wind aloftand flung my eager craft through footless halls of air.Up up the long delirious burning blue,I've topped the wind swept heights with easy gracewhere neither lark nor eagle flew.
And there with silent lifting mindI've trod the high untrespassed sanctity of spacePut out my hand and touched the face of God.