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Membership of ESP is open to PG pilots who consistently display good airmanship and who fly in compliance to UK Air laws.
Members are required to remain current (at least 25hrs flown p/a), a few individual sites have either stricter club restriction or legal requirements which members must abide by (this can be airlaw i.e. airspace or ATC requirements or local bylaws). In the case of ‘club’ restrictions these are normally complying with simple requests from the farmers / landowners regarding flying arrangements, this may be as simple as ‘PPR’ i.e. giving prior phone notification by the club rep to check on any issues that may be relevant that day before pilots drive to the site.
How we started:
ESP was started in 2003 by Duncan Booth & Murray Hay to provide a club with a fresh 'aviation based' approach for ALL PG pilots living (or regularly visiting) the East of Scotland, who treat paragliding as a serious branch of aviation, no matter where they first trained.
Check flights
New members require a check flight on applying to join, this is normal practice in joining general aviation clubs and in view of the number of BHPA ‘CP’ pilots who can’t launch with assistance we have had to adopted this policy. In addition at the time of this update the BHPA have so far had ELEVEN mid air collisions in 2015... Check flights help ensure our club does not suffer from the high accident rates others suffer from. In addition there are issues that arise due to the lack of 'currency', new low airtime members are restricted to ‘club flying’ at some club sites until their hours (and site) currency have reached the required reasonable standard (note this does not apply to ‘open sites’.
As an indication of what can be safely achieved, Murray who provides both training & re-training has himself flown over ten thousand hours so far since his first flights in the mid 90’s!
The club is registered with the BHPC one of our national sporting body's, the sporting body being the BHPA which a number of our members also belong to.
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