On Saturday 26 October 2024, Moray Flying Club in conjunction with the Douglas Bader Foundation, held a Spirit of Bader Day at RAF Lossiemouth, during which local Moray youngsters who live with a disability had the opportunity to fly in one of our light aircraft, as did their family members and wider support group.

Unfortunately, the weather was not as kind as it might have been and the 4 seat Cessna aircraft was delayed in getting over from Aberdeen due to low cloud on the east coast. However proceedings got underway in our Lossie based 2 seat Pipistrels including the all electric Velis Electro, in which Zoe, Alfie and Mark now have the honour of being one of a currently small group of people in the UK who have experienced wholly electric flight!

Once the Cessna arrived around 1100, flying of the families as a group got underway.

Whilst a very good lunch was being taken from 1200 (thanks Ian and Beryl), the Defence Fire Section gave the youngsters a close up display of the their modern appliances and the power of the water cannons necessary for fighting heavy aviation fuel fires. Once flying resumed, the winds preceding a nasty front heading in from the west had increased significantly and after a further round of flights they became in excess of the aircraft limits and flying was prematurely brought to a halt as gusts reached 37 knots (43mph). Nine flights were completed before the wind blew.

As can be imagined this was extremely disappointing for those who had still to fly and it will be of little comfort that the disappointment was also shared by MFC!

During the course of the day, our Pipistrel virtual reality simulator was put to good use and it is the closest thing to flying we can offer without leaving the ground. This was backed up with a more conventional PC based sim and The Ice Age trilogy also proved to be very popular on the TV!

Update Saturday 20 March 2025
With the support of Highland Aviation at Inverness Airport, the families who missed out due to the weather in October were flown from Inverness in the Cessna 172 Tango Tango and had a great time!  With that our mission was completed.

Our thanks for both days go to the

Young Aviators, their families and supporters
Keith Delderfield, Douglas Bader Foundation
Sharon Aitken and Laura McDonald, Buckie High School
Defence Fire and Rescue Lossiemouth
RAF Lossie Air Traffic Control
Alexander Air (Aberdeen) & Highland Aviation (Inverness)
George Mackenzie, Tony Falkingham and all other MFC volunteers
and everyone else at RAF Lossiemouth who helped make this happen!