http://www.hgfa.asn.au/~dhgc/

The Dalby Hang Gliding Club is an aerotow based hang gliding club. It is the only "real" aerotow club that I know one of. The club has a hangar at the Dalby Aerodrome. It was given the use of the hangar free for a few years but now pays a nominal fee. This was provided by the local council in order to encourage use of the air strip.

The members expanded the hangar and enclosed the rest of it to double their space. There are two Moyes-Bailey Dragonflies in the hangar as well as a motorized Swift, and hang gliders.

One of the Dragonflies belong to the club. The club is dependant on the fact that Blaino, Bruce and Smokey like to tow up hang glider pilots. I guess that they could all get Mosquitoes if they needed to (but then there would be no need to go out to the airport).

Most of the pilots live a couple or three hours away on the Gold Coast, Sunshine Coast or in Brisbane (where there is good mountain flying not too far away at Canungra and Beechmont). But the weather is better on the western side of the Great Dividing Range.

Other aerotow "clubs" like say the Draachen Fliegen Soaring Club, Inc. (http://members.aol.com/dfscinc/index.htm) are really the invention of the owners of the flight parks (http://members.aol.com/cloud9sa/). Clubs like the Draagenfliegers are created as a way to stay within FAA rules, but aren't clubs in the sense that the Dalby Hang Gliding Club is a self governing vehicle and the members really do have the final say in all matters.

I would imagine that it would be tough to have a club that actually owned the Dragonflies and it is amazing that the Dalby Hang Gliding Club owns one. This is what Jason Reid <<email>>, the current president, had to say about the history of the club:

Obviously the sailplane guys were out there on the Darling Downs for many years before hang gliders ever flew in the area. I started flying sailplanes 25 years ago. Some Canungra and Sunshine Coast pilots started car towing hang gliders out in the Dalby area 20 years ago, then Phil Pritchard and others with the help of Moyes help a couple of comps in the 90’s at Dalby airport.

About the same time I started heading out to the Darling Downs Gliding Club where Smokey and Shane McCaffrey (the gliding club airfield is called “McCaffrey’s field. Shane did fly on the Oz team, a very handy pilot) would tow me up and laugh like hell about the poor performance I had in the old XT. Anyway, after many years of taking mates out to car tow Smokey, Tex and I sat down over a beer and planned the formation of an aero tow club.

We started looking for a cheap trike and during the search we were told of this guy named Flocky who was a commercial pilot and that he had a Dragonfly without a home (he had just moved up from Sydney). His partner in the Dragonfly was Kieran Brown at the time and they both jumped at the chance to hangar their tug in Dalby.

Smokey and I lobbied the local aerodrome board and were successful in securing the hangar. We now occupy free of rent for the first five years providing we enclosed it ourselves. We begged, borrowed, and scraped the materials together and by the time we were ready to do the work we had 10-12 very handy members willing to pitch in and help. It was a tight crew with Flocky (very handy man in all respects), Rowdy (Paul Allen, roofer by trade), Boof (Daron Hodder, very generous with money) and a bunch of very motivated pilots. We managed to enclose the hangar, doors and all, in only two weekends,  the Dragonfly was home!

Flocky and Kiero were not keen on having anyone else use their aircraft initially, so they split the towing between them, later on they worked out a deal to allow Smokey to start towing and then sold the tug to the club (high price, but generous offer to be paid off over three years).

Unfortunately (so often happens in clubs), personality clashes and factions happened, but those that have remained have had the last laugh with superb flying and great friendships.

Bruce and Annie joined us a couple of years ago and decided to back up the club’s tug with one of their own, they introduced Blaino who is now the reason the green tug is going so well,  so that’s it really, seven or eight years of history.

Like I said, difficult for a club to do this.