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 modern design glider that is lovely to fly and had good performance for a training aircraft. The PW6 is comfortable and robust making 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.
We currently have 2 K13's and the one you can see in the picture to the left 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.
PW-5
The PW-5 (Smyk) is a compact, single-seat, Polish glider initially designed in the late 80's for the proposed IGC World Class competition. The PW-5 is incredibly lightweight and easy to fly which makes it a great first single seater to convert into after your 2-seat training. The PW-5 has good performance for its size and our members enjoy both local soaring and badge badge claim flights in it.
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 having recently had a ground up restoration on the frame and aircraft skin.
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.
