Tag Archives: reminiscing

Flying Machines–

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Jack’s guest blog today – – –

Some friends came past the house yesterday, walking their dog, and we got in conversation. They had recently visited a small airfield that is home to a gliding club and that immediately set off a memory for me.

When I was about seventeen years old and heavily into building model planes, I saw an advert in the magazine I subscribed to. It was for gliding vacations at a flying club in Yorkshire. One week of lessons with accommodation and meals.

All my previous vacations had been family affairs by the seaside.

Off I set, by train, to Thirsk, and then by bus to the small village where the lovely old inn was situated, and where I’d be staying along with the others who’d booked up. The village was near the foot of a steep cliff, and the field that was home to the gliding club was on the top.

The way the days went were – after a large breakfast at the inn we got into an ancient land-rover and drove up the hairpin bends to the flying field (and sometimes I got to drive!). Then some theory lessons in the clubhouse, as delivered by the chief instructor, who was Polish and had flown Spitfires during WW2. He was a real character! Then a series of flights – each one starting by hooking the glider to a cable attached to a large winch, being hauled up to around 200 feet, releasing the cable, and then sailing over the cliff.

But then, wonder of wonders, it was like sitting in an armchair in the sky. No engine noise and no whirling propeller in front! Then the search was on for rising air, either a thermal of warm air or an updraft from the cliff face.

The gliders weren’t the sleek machines of today – this was the 1950s and the club had rather boxy Slingsby sailplanes with side by side seats – one for the pupil and one for the instructor. The factory where they were made was nearby, and one of our day trips was to see them being constructed.

The only scary moment I remember is when, as we were floating along at about a thousand feet, a twin jet RAF bomber screamed past us heading to a nearby base.

Ah – memories!

Come back next Wednesday for more from Jack

Rolling Along on the Airwaves

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Jack’s Wednesday guest post written in between trick or treaters showing up – –

A few weeks ago I posted about the odd and strange ways that I found myself singing songs all around Europe and America.

Much the same is true of my radio experiences over the years. That started in the late 1980s when my good friend Rab Noakes was working as a producer at the BBC in Glasgow. He got the idea of a weekly folk music program on a Friday night but with knowledgeable guest presenters taking turns. He asked me to do some of them. I didn’t need to learn how to work any equipment – Rab did that.

Not too long after that, another friend got in touch. Alan Brown was doing a weekly show on Heartland fm in Pitlochry called ‘Scene Around,’ but the American lady who subbed for him once a month had moved away. So I ended up replacing her!

Meanwhile my good buddy Wayne Bean had started presenting ‘Keltik Korner’ – a weekly Celtic music program on WETS.fm in Johnson City, Tennessee, and asked if I could send him my Heartland shows. They were taped onto cassettes in the Heartland office as they aired live then mailed across the Atlantic (no internet or cloud back then). When Wayne gave up his show, another one started, and it was presented by Denise Cozad, who continued to take my mine.

Of course, when Wendy and I moved to England it was no longer possible to present a live Sunday lunchtime radio show in Pitlochry. But a few years later we moved to Big Stone Gap in Virginia – just an hour from WETS.fm in Johnson City. I noticed that they no longer had a locally produced Celtic music program, so I emailed the station manager saying where I was and asking was he interested. Within a couple of months I was pre-recording twelve Celtic Clanjamphries and thought that might be the end of the story.

Well – –

It’s been fourteen years and approaching eight hundred programs, and my show now airs on two different NPR stations. And now I work with a good friend, who became my engineer back in Wise, who lives in South Carolina now. Quarterly, Wendy and I travel to SC to hang with Dirk Wiley and his wife, Martha. Wendy, Dirk, and Martha all do guest shows, so it’s become something of a family affair.

Come back next Wednesday for more from Jack