Light Aircraft Association Rally 2024

By Nigel Hitchman

It was a great start at a “new” venue for the Light Aircraft Association Rally in Leicester, England on August 29 to September 1, 2024, with 550 visiting aircraft, mostly homebuilts and vintage aircraft making this Europe’s largest fly-in of the year (which the LAA Rally generally has been and Aero Friedrichshafen the biggest trade show). With 80 or so early arrivals on Thursday, the field soon started to fill up on Friday with around 300 arrivals in perfect weather. Many stayed overnight camping on the field or in local hotels and the Leicestershire Aeroclub had an excellent setup with selections of food and a bar open until late in the evening and then breakfast again in the morning. Quite a bit of local flying Friday evening with some people giving rides and others just flying for fun which was great to see.

Saturday started with beautiful weather again and lots more arrivals just about filling the parking area. Later in the day, cloud cover came over and the wind increased to about 15 mph, luckily down the runway, but it got cold for those of us still in shorts and tshirts! With a forecast of scattered thunderstorms on Sunday some people left early on Saturday evening and there wasn’t so much local flying, but we still had a great time socialising with friends at the Aero club. That’s a lot of what the event is about: meeting up with your friends and looking around at all the visiting aircraft as well as watching the arrivals and departures. There was also an exhibition area, with a few vendors selling the latest kit aircraft and plenty of parts vendors, aircraft fabric covering demonstrations, and even a Spitfire IX that you could pay to sit in. Sunday was mostly the going home day, but we did have 20 or 30 arrivals. Lots of people cancelled due to the forecast, but in the end it was dry and sunny all day in the Leicester area after some early morning low cloud, although the weather prevented some from going home when planned.

 

Best Vintage Aircraft was awarded to Roger Benson’s beautifully restored Piper J-4A Cub Coupe. This was imported by Ron Souch/Aero Antiques in 1984, repainted and cleaned up, and had a few owners before being blown over at Barra, Scotland in 2002 when the wind suddenly increased massively as they were taxiing out. The damaged aircraft was recovered and bought by Roger who has spent the last 20 years slowly restoring it in his spare time. It was great to see and a well deserved award winner. Best Classic and also Best Replica was Matthew Boddington’s Slingsby type 56 Currie Wot/SE5 replica G-AVOU. This was one of six SE5 replicas built by Singsby for the film Darling Lili and was also used in several other films such as Von Richoften and Brown with most of the filming done in Ireland. It was exported to the U.S. in the early 1980s along with many of the collection from Ireland and came back to England in 2015 for an eight year restoration by Matt Boddington with the first flight in April 2023. Concourse D’elegance was won by Tom Leaver’s beautiful Travel Air 4000. A great selection of vintage aircraft arrived, mostly individually owned, but the Real Aeroplane club brought a selection from their collection at Breighton which included the Fairchild 24R Argus G-BCBL, Tipsy Junior G-AMVP, CASA 1.131E Jungmann G-CIUE, Piper J3C Cub NC98712, and SAAB Safir G-EKTP.

This year’s Rally at Leicester proved to be an excellent start with friendly cooperation from Leicestershire Aero Club who run the airfield. Over 700 slot bookings were made, but with the usual no show rate, particularly with poor weather forecast for the Sunday, we ended up with around 550 visiting aircraft, including 25 flying from outside the UK. This bodes very well for the future, if additional parking space can be made available by turning a field now used for crop into an aircraft parking area. With an additional increase in the arrival slots we could grow to be at least as big as Sywell, but in a lot of others ways be even better with the proactive “can do” attitude of the Leicestershire Aero Club.

History of the LAA and the Rally The UK Light Aircraft Association (LAA) formerly known as the Popular Flying Association (1949-2008) was formed as the Ultralight Aircraft Association in 1946. Its objective was to persuade the government that Ultralight aircraft didn’t need a Certificate of Airworthiness and could be looked after by the association. This was agreed and they were given authority to issue “Permits to Fly” to aircraft weighing less than 1000 lbs with engines no more than 40 hp and a landing speed of no more than 40 mph. Aircraft would be inspected during construction and before first flight by inspectors from the Ultralight Aircraft Association. This continues today but has been vastly expanded to include homebuilts up to 4 seats as well as many vintage aircraft which either have no factory support or whose owners chose to operate them on a permit to fly, rather than a full C of A. This was easy for many vintage types in the 1980s resulting in literally hundreds of Cubs, Luscombes, Aeroncas, Taylorcraft, Jodels, Emeraudes etc. being imported until the CAA changed their mind in 1992, making all new imports which were eligible for a C of A to have to have one. This has recently changed again with a landmark change of ruling, so we are seeing several more Super Cubs and others move across, and in recent years have also seen many de Havilland types, Stampes, and Austers able to be operated on a permit to fly which for most is a much cheaper and easier way to operate.

 

The PFA had various fly-ins over the years, moving around until settling on Sywell in the 70s, in 1979 it moved to Leicester for three years before going to Cranfield in 1982 as there was more room. The Rally really grew in size here, now regularly attracting over 1000 aircraft, but a threat of building work led to a move to the Science Museum airfield at Wroughton from 1991-93. Lack of interest from those running the science museum and changes to plans at Cranfield brought a move back there from 1994-2002, and during this time we reached a peak of 1800 aircraft at one Rally and regularly over 1500. Cranfield building work finally started, and the Rally moved to Kemble in 2003 with a very successful first year, again with over 1500 aircraft, but the next three years suffered from poor weather and a low attendance, so the Rally lost a lot of money and was stopped after the 2006 event.

 

A re-think was required. For a couple years there were a few regional events, and then the LAA were able to go in partnership with Sywell airfield, where instead of hiring the airfield and much infrastructure which needed to be repaid through admissions, Sywell would provide the airfield and services and take the entry charges. LAA would organise the exhibition side and be paid by the exhibitors. Unfortunately the CAA also now wanted to reduce the numbers and made Sywell introduce a slot booking system for arrivals. Although this was run with a light touch it put some people off, and with the reduced arrival rates the Rally became about half the size it had been before with generally 600 to 800 aircraft visiting depending on the weather. This did work well for a number of years, but after the successful 2021 event, the Sywell Airfield management decided they didn’t want to continue with the agreement. Now the hunt was on for a new airfield and it was very difficult to find one. Two small events were held at Popham and then it was announced that for 2024 we would move back to Leicester.