I would welcome any BP folk who flew with Aden Services Gliding Club at the airfield near Sheik Othman to contact me. In particular I recollect a Jim Early, one of our instructors, who I think worked for BP. This was 1964 to 66 era.

All the best

Les Simpson
Shifnal
Shropshire

Email: lessimpson24@blueyonder.co.uk

Hi Les,

Have you seen this map donated by Brian Redfern. It shows the areas the gliders operated in Aden. The link is http://www.bpadenkids.com/Aden%20Kart%205.pdf

As a pilot of powered aircraft I will be very interested if you could let me know how gliding conditions were in Aden. I would imagine the thermal activity must have been excellent.

Best wishes

Jonathan Wilkins

Email: n606jp@comcast.net

Please accept my apologies for not replying earlier Jonathan. I now have Brians map. I learned to fly gliders at Sheik Othman and although I had flights of 2 hours plus on several occasions I cannot comment accurately. However from memory,thermals were frequent, strong, narrow low down and very rough. When I took visitors on soaring trips they would complain of cold at or even below cloudbase, typically 3000-4000 ft, and want to come down.

As we flew most afternoons in the "cool" season soaring skill developed fairly rapidly. We talked a lot about inland cross country flights but retrieving gliders over sand was a major problem added to that the deteriorating military situation.

To give you a better picture, since making my request on BP Kids, I have created a Facebook page that relates to Aden Services Gliding Club. One of the contributers has set out reports from Sailplane and Gliding. Therein lies a really good description
of our gliding activities.

I am certain that many BP families visited us and flew at Shiek Othman I would like to hear from them.

The Facebook Page for the articles mentioned above is:

http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=381702802864&v=app_2373072738#!/topic.php?uid=381702802864&topic=14305

There are some good Aden photos as well on the related pages.

All the best

Les

Email: lessimpson24@blueyonder.co.uk