IFFR – French Section

The French Section Spring Meeting was this year held at the Vendee Air Park, courtesy of Jean-Pierre Gabert, the Chairman of the French Section. An Air Park is unusual in Europe but more common in the United States. The essence is that each house on the development sports a hangar and that the “estate road” doubles as vehicle access and as a taxiway to the runway which in the case of VAP is 800m of tarmac with a grass runway alongside. In a word – Pilot heaven!

Our Chairman, Ian Kerr, flew down on the Friday and arrived in excellent weather. The “English” contingent did not enjoy the same blue skies. John Bowden and Ives Branson in John’s Airedale GATCC and John Ritchie (with son George) and Kevin Young in GIFFR joined up in Le Touquet on the Friday and commenced the weekend in style with Dinner in Perards, famed for its seafood. We were not disappointed.

Saturday morning dawned fair in Le Touquet but the Cold Front which should have remained in the Bay of Biscay had slipped rather closer, leaving excellent visibility under a cloud base of some 1200 feet at VAP but a number of showers en route. Unfortunately the weather was not so kind in East Anglia and Norman Beadle was unable to join us.
GIFFR took the low road but decided to give up the unequal struggle at Alencon, where they holed up in the rain until Sunday afternoon when it relented long enough for the to escape back to Henlow. GATCC took an higher level arriving at VAP in the promised good Vis but with 20 knots of wind, happily straight down the rather narrow runway. On arrival it became clear that the previous arrival had not fared so well. The sight of a rather battered Cessna was concerning but happily the pilot suffered only minor injuries and was able to join in the weekend.

After an excellent buffet lunch in the Clubhouse we travelled by coach to the nearby seaside home of Georges Clemenceau, the Prime Minister of France at the time of the First World War. After an extremely informative video and tour under the direction of clearly one of M. Clemenceau’s most ardent admirers we joined the coach again for the Hotel Parc de la Grange in nearby Jard sur Mer, where we enjoyed an excellent Dinner.

The weather was still poor on Sunday morning, so the planned flight around the islands had to be shelved. Instead we visited a car museum in Les Sable d’Olonne, followed by a walk around the town before returning to VAP for a pre departure lunch.
Sometimes nothing in flying seems to be simple. Whilst John R. managed to return to the UK without problem from Alencon, John B. found part of the fabric on the underside of the fuselage detaching on landing to clear Customs at Deauville. A satisfactory temporary repair could not be achieved, so an unscheduled stopover in Deauville was called for.
The President and members of the Aero Club at Deauville could not have been more helpful, arranging an hotel booking, a lift to the hotel and most importantly an engineer who just happened to be a fabric specialist. GATCC was back in full working order by the middle of Monday afternoon, by which time the weather had also cleared – that is apart form some scattered Cbs between Hastings and Headcorn, which were given a wide berth.
In addition to the UK members and a large contingent of the French, we also enjoyed seeing Marc and Ruth Bonnet from Geneva and Giorgio Aletti and Roland Marrek and their party from Italy who sensibly landed at La Rochelle in Giorgio’s Malibu, faring better than their abortive attempt to join the UK meeting in Waterford earlier in the month, which was blessed with similarly wet weather and low cloud!

Many thanks to Jean-Pierre and Dany Gabert for organising such an enjoyable, if challenging, weekend and for showing us the excellent facilities at the Vendee Air Park.

John Bowden