East Midlands LAA Strut March 2025 Meeting

[TRAZZELL]

How time flies - it is already nearly March and the next meeting of the East Midlands LAA Strut is 7:30pm on Tuesday the 4th March at The Plough, Main Street, Normanton on Soar, nr Loughborough, LE12 5HB.

Please note that due to The Plough still operating a reduced winter service, there will be no food available on Tuesday, only drinks (I have checked that they are open and that the room is available for us to use!)

This month we have a real treat as Geoffrey New will be coming to tell us about his Avro 504L restoration project. The Avro 504 was originally designed in 1912 (9 years after the Wright brothers first took to the air) and was somewhat ahead of its time with staggered biplane wings and full 3-axis control. After extensive use in WW1, initially in operations but particularly later on as a trainer, the military K variant was modified to become the civilian Avro 504L with three seats. Avro 504L G-EASD was built in 1920 and was used in commercial operations from new, effectively becoming part of the new airline industry and is believed to be the earliest  surviving civil aircraft anywhere in the world. Geoffrey will go through the operational history of the aircraft, and then describe how it was discovered in Sweden around 30 years ago and brought back to the UK. He will then describe how he went about restoring the aircraft and how far he has got. As a restoration project it is unique in that no other 3 seat Avro 504Ls survive.

In addition to the talk, Geoffrey will be bringing along a number of items to display in a show and tell, including an instrument panel. These will be available for viewing before the talk which starts promptly at 8:00pm as our speaker will need to drive back to Oxfordshire later in the evening so please arrive in good time to see them.

I would encourage you to make an effort to come to the Strut meeting at The Plough so that you can meet Geoffrey in person and look at the items which he is bringing along. However, if you have too far to travel or the timing just doesn't work, I will run a Zoom session as usual so that you can join in, I'll aim to open the Zoom after 7:30pm and we will be using the usual Zoom login details as follows:

Topic: East Midlands LAA Strut Zoom link
Time: This is a recurring meeting Meet anytime
Join Zoom Meeting
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/89351024107?p ... s4eDhZdz09

Meeting ID: 893 5102 4107
Passcode: 251605

As reminder, for the following meeting on the 1st April, I have asked Mike Roberts (ex LAA Engineering) to tell us about aircraft design and how the new tools and methods which are now available can be used to make the design - construction process easier. I am aiming to have our AGM on the 6th May.

I hope to see you all next Tuesday, I'll put out a reminder a day or two beforehand.

Best regards

Tony Razzell

East Midlands LAA Strut Coordinator