Thanks to John McCullagh, Assistant Editor of Rising Air, Lasham Gliding‘s newsletter, we learned that Lasham’s newsletter archive is online. John also referred us to an online archive of Sailplane and Glider (predecessor to the BGA magazine Sailplane and Gliding), Gliding, and Sailplane and Gliding up through 2000. This archive was developed and is maintained by The Lakes Gliding Club, based at Walney Airfield, Barrow-in-Furness, Cumbria UK.

Here’s an excerpt from The Lakes GC Web site:

“These UK gliding magazines were the start of a 7 year scanning project that has evolved into a determination to professionally scan all out of print UK gliding books and create an eBook library. The intention is that the BGA will have an accessible, catalogued hard copy gliding library and eventually the BGA website will host all the scanned UK gliding magazines and eBook library. Both magazines and eBooks will be searchable and freely available.

“THE MAGAZINES. The magazines are grouped by volume number or date and magazine title. 397 loaded so far. A keyword search cannot be done across all files from here but you can read and search the individual magazines. Over 700 magazines have been scanned including 108 VGC News magazines from 1973 to 2003. For security and posterity, the BGA and VGC have been given master digital copies of their respective magazines.

• Sailplane and Glider from 1930 to 1955 (300, all loaded)
• Gliding from 1950 to 1955 (22, all loaded)
• Sailplane and Gliding from 1955 to 2000 (274, 32 loaded so far)
• Soaring Pilot from 1973 to 1974 (4, all loaded)
• VGC News from 1973 to 2003 (108, 64 loaded so far)

The first ever UK gliding magazine was “Sailplane and Glider” Sept 6th 1930, Vol 1 No 1“