Fleet
Our Fleet
We have a fantastic fleet of modern gliders at Essex gliding club, comprising of 4 x 2-seater aircraft and 1 single seater aircraft. All of the gliders in our fleet are available for hire and the prices for hiring our gliders can be found on our pricing page.
Our fleet is well maintained and kept in pristine condition to ensure the best safety and wellbeing standards for all our members and visitors.
PW-6U
The PZW PW6. We have two of these Polish training gliders. Made entirely of glass fibre the PW6 is a later design than the ASK-13 and has a higher performance. The PW6 is easy to fly, and makes for a great training aircraft.
ASK-13
The Schleicher K13 must have trained more pilots than any other glider worldwide. Designed in Germany and first flown in 1966, gliding clubs worldwide have used this dependable workhorse as a trainer. The K13's rugged wood, fabric and glass fibre construction make it ideally suited to the heavy workload of being a club trainer.
Our K13 has been repainted and extensively overhauled. The K13 is painted in the colours of the USAF's 381st Heavy Bombardment group that was stationed at Ridgewell during WW2.
Centrair 201 Marianne
The Marianne is owned by a club member who generously allows the club to operate it.
The Marianne's 19 metre span gives it a long legged cross country performance making it ideal for longer training flights.
The French design of the Marianne makes it one of the best looking gliders on our field.
Grob Astir
The Grob Astir. This is the club single seat glider. It has a good performance with a retractable undercarriage. It has a large cockpit, so it can be flown in comfort by almost everyone. The Astir is our most popular glider for post solo pilots wishing to fly cross country tasks.
Piper Pawnee
The Piper Pawnee is an agricultural aircraft produced between 1959 and 1981.
Designed for crop spraying, this robust agricultural workhorse lends itself well to glider towing and is used widely by gliding clubs all around the world.
Our aircraft is a particularly good example of its type.
SKYLAUNCH Glider Launching Winch
The winch was built for us by 'SKYLAUNCH'. It is powered by a V8 General Motors engine, the 'Big Block Chevy' and has the sort of power that the name suggests! The engine drives one or other of two very large drums through an automatic gearbox. The drums pull the cable which is six millimetre diameter DYNEEMA, an artificial fibre rope of enormous strength and low weight. The winch driver selects the appropriate drum and waits for instructions from the launch point by radio. From the moment that they get the message, it takes about thirty seconds to put a glider into the air at between a thousand and fifteen hundred feet. We are very eco-friendly. It runs on LPG.
