The Ghost Squadron

History

The foundation of the team was set when Alan Carter and Vic Combs decided to join the Watford Wayfarers model aircraft club who flew at Croxley moor in Watford. There they met John Greenfield.

John was one of the flight instructors and he taught Vic and Al to fly RC aircraft. At the time John was embarking on a large model project, this was a 12 foot wingspan Short Skyvan. Back then, in 1979 this was considered to be a very large model. Al offered to help John with the electrical installation. The rest is history as Al is still wiring John's planes today. The Skyvan was completed and was test flown at Middle Wallop Army Air Base. John, Vic and  Al supported by John's wife Glenda (known to everyone as "Addie")  then started to fly at local shows, this was 1980. The name Ghost Squadron was given to the team by some of the other modelers who had observed that once the bar was open we could not be found on the flight line !!

  John also flew at the West London Club site and there he met Dr Jeremy Shaw who was also building large models. One day in about early 1982 John and Jeremy were having a discussion about issues with building and flying large models, at the time the BMFA was not interested in anything over 7KG. Between them, they thought it was time to start an association dedicated to the building and safe flying of large models. John placed an advert in all the modeling press inviting any like minded and interested modelers to come to a meeting. As no funds were available to hire a hall the meeting was held in Jeremy's front room after first putting all the furniture out in the garden. 27 people attended that meeting and that was the founding of the Large Model Association.

The Ghost Squadron continued to fly and run events and ran the very successful Wings and Wheels flight line for many years which is now the longest continually running model show in the UK. In 1998 the Team was invited to Dubai to put on a week long airshow.  We shipped out 23 pilots and all their models and the event was a great success and established model flying as a sport in the country for the first time.

The Team is still as active today as they were back in the early days. The Team will celebrate its 43rd anniversary this year, with two of the original members, John and Al, with support from John's wife Addie, still very active in the hobby and still both proud members of the LMA. The list of current team members can be found here

Some photo's from the early days

   The Wing loading was always going to be high !

                   Short Sky Van

The original Team Vic John Al and Glenda (Addie), John's wife

John's first published plan a 1/3rd scale Bucker Jungmeister

List of past Ghost Squadron members

Pete Ford                            Pete Griggs

Colin Bond                          Martin Heath

Pete Bolderstone                Simon Steggal

Vic Coombs                        Ron Harris

Ivan Goodchild (Deceased)

Pat Marsden                       Jane Marsden

Andrew Taylor (Deceased)

Team members always have a list of projects on the bench, Al and John have retired from full time employment so the project output has increased. The technology has also moved on and we no longer cut everything by hand as we now have 3 cnc machines, a 3D printer, an A0 plotter, more computers than NASA had to launch the moon landings and will have very shortly a 3D scanner that Al is currently building.