May I just add a Ralph story, I was unable to attend his day due to work
commitments.

Some years ago our brand new Discus has its back broken. We were
devastated and didn't want a repaired 'new' glider even if it could be
done.

Ralph understood and said he'd get a new fuselage. Discuses were very
popular and the queue was huge (two years IIRC), but he arranged to have a
new fus squeezed into the queue.

To keep us flying he organised a spare fuselage while the new one was
being built and swapped our instruments over. When the new fus arrived he
swapped all the instruments again (at no extra charge to us or the
insurers) and then arranged an aerotow at no charge from Membury to the
Standard Class Nats at Hus Bos.

Thankfully I saw him a few weeks ago when he rocked up in his Volvo at
Membury, said "hello my boy, how are you", shook hands and we had a very
pleasant chat.

Great chap.


At 23:00 20 March 2009, John Galloway wrote:
Back in the mid 80s a friend and I travelled about 400 miles one weekend
to
look at a glider that Ralph was selling on behalf of a friend for no
financial gain to himself . We were just a pair of strangers to Ralph
from the back of gliding beyond. We sorted out the business and then
asked Ralph for a recommendation for somewhere to stay the night to
which
he replied: "You're staying with us tonight - Jane is expecting you
for
dinner". We had a great evening of food, drink and conversation. That
was just pure generosity of spirit.

John Galloway