Cotswold Radio Control Society

The Gull series of aircraft was the brainchild of Captain Edgar W. Percival who was a Sopwith Camel pilot in the first world war. During the early 1930’s his aircraft designs were focused on the King’s Cup Races and it is interesting to note that with an uprated Gipsy Six engine the Mew Gull achieved speeds in excess of 270mph!

My early research led me to XF which was on loan to the Shuttleworth Collection at Old Warden. My telephone call to seek permission to take some photographs met a very polite response that she was no longer in their care and had been sold to the Real Aeroplane Company at Breighton Aerodrome in Yorkshire! So it had to be a weekend away. On arrival I met Barry Yeardley the airfield manager who promptly gave me the keys to the hangar and said “take as long as you like” – such Yorkshire hospitality. An added bonus was to fly in his syndicated Piper Cub. I was a little sceptical at the initial invitation as only a few hours before they had the engine in bits and had been making quite a racket in a corner of the airfield “running her up”. Anyhow the flight passed in an uneventful way although the decision was taken to fly south were there were some larger fields “just in case”! On landing and to my surprise my wife had returned from her shopping and was ready to climb on board but this time her pilot was ex Avro Shackleton captain who had spent a good deal of his time flying north of the Arctic Circle looking for Russian submarines so I guessed she would be in safe hands.