Yes, I was lucky enough to buy Peters Riedels original Dimond badge and
also his original Silver badge. The Silver one was 7th in Germany and
8th in the world. In addition I was able to buy his photo album with
more than 200 beautiful pictures. All of the pictures are original and
relate to the 1934 German gliding expedition to South America. Thank
God that the Auctioneer was bright enough to not disperse this scrap
book and sell it in one piece. Only because of this, these great
historical documents will forever be kept intact.


Nyal Williams wrote:
Sorry,I do not. The pictures were on eBay, but the
items were sold yesterday and eBay removes information
on sold items immediately.

The 'diamonds were set it the perimeter of the badge,
very near the edge, with one at the top and the other
two low on the sides. Early descriptions of the badge
stated that they could be so mounted. The back view
of Riedel's badge showed that a small hole had been
drilled out and then 'soldered' over after the stone
was put in place. The badge weas an early enough issue
that it did not have a letter to identify country above
the seagulls. A fellow named Kaleta bought it; perhaps
he could provide a picture. He is a member of SSA
and his name appears in the directory.

The second badge was a standard American diamond badge
with the appropriate N above the birds.

The older badge is the way such a badge was described
in Philip Wills' 'On Being a Bird.'





At 22:54 20 November 2006,
wrote:

Nyal Williams wrote:
We should re-design the diamond badge. The original
was nice; the
current design, with the 3-diamond crest at the top
is ugly, ugly, ugly!

The first design called for the diamonds to be distributed
evenly around
the edge of the gold badge and each one of the diamond
legs had a
specific location on the badge. This allowed the
addition of the
diamonds, one-by-one, as they were earned.

Those of you who saw Peter Riedel's badges offered
on eBay had
opportunity to compare the old version and the new
version side by
side. Seems to me we could change the current method
of an add-on crest
for a new add-on device , triangular in shape, that
would allow
positioning the stones equilaterally around the badge.
That would
return to specific locations for specific legs. There
are pilots with
gold badges who have had one and even two diamond
legs for years and
years; why not let them display these in the proper
location so as to
know their accomplishments?

Do you have a picture of the diamond badges?

Jacek