The AGM was held by Zoom on April 14th.
The first item was Chairman Chris Roberts’s Report: In April 2019 I
was preparing to report on another successful year for the Hawker
Association and our usual programme of events, unaware of how much
everything was about to change. As usual the Kingston venue had
supported our talks, socials, the summer BBQ and another very enjoyable
Christmas lunch. There was also the annual outing, which was to Surrey
Satellite Technologies in Guildford. Hawker Association Members
continue to support Brooklands museum extensively and one of our main
achievements was finalising the acquisition of and reassembly of
G-HAWK; now on chocks next to G-VTOL. Brooklands has a great historical
significance for Hawker and it is both a pleasure and privilege for our
Members to be involved in preservation and cultural heritage activities
at what is the world’s most significant and extensive display of Hawker
aircraft.
A review of a number of inputs from Members has been carried out,
some changes have been made to the way we operate and the Hawker
Association remains fully compliant with the constitution. One debate
was whether to keep Membership numbers buoyant by attracting more non
ex-company employees, and widening our activity subjects accordingly.
However, we are not the U3a or the RAeS so we will continue to follow
our heritage in all the ways we have been doing since the formation of
the Association.
Unfortunately our programme for last year was cancelled completely when
the Covid pandemic extinguished our precious interactions with
families, friends and colleagues. The social Tsunami rolled over us and
kept us distanced. The Newsletter, considered to be a mainstay of the
Hawker Association, was not affected and was more welcome given the
circumstances. In November we started a monthly Zoom programme thanks
to David Priddy and the Ashford Common Baptist Church. This not only
bump-started a monthly meeting but has brought more members into
contact with old colleagues and friends than had been the case at the
Kingston YMCA in the past.
Zoom is a two-edged sword but we will be looking at
continuing with this medium as a means of improving the Association’s
experience as we move forward out of lockdown. The debate will be to
what degree Zoom should be embraced when all aspects of social
distancing have ended, and what ‘getting back to normal’ means for the
HA.
The Secretary’s report was given by assistant secretary Dick
Poole. He reported that the Association now has 323 members of
which 207 are fairly local to Kingston, 100 are distant and 16 are
overseas. Sadly, since the last AGM in 2019 27 Members have died.
However, there has been an upward trend in attendances at meetings and
events which continued with the introduction of Zoom meetings during
the Coronavirus pandemic restrictions, the Test Pilots’ Forum in
February attracting over 50 Members.
Our treasurer, Martin Pennell, reported a healthy
end of 2020 balance of £2759.82, slightly up on the previous year. The
accounts were approved by the meeting.
The existing committee members, and chairman Chris
Roberts, were re-elected and Dick Poole who had previously been
co-opted was elected a full committee member. The Committee is now Ken
Batstone (social events), Richard Cannon (webmaster), Chris Farara
(newsletter and archive), Wilf Firth, David Hassard (Kingston Aviation
Heritage Project), Barry Pegram (secretary), Martin Pennell
(treasurer), Dick Poole, Frank Rainsborough (meetings and visits) and
Paul Rash (Hunter XL623 restoration).
After the AGM our president, Colin Wilson, gave an illustrated talk
on his life as an aviation artist. A report will appear in a later
issue of the Newsletter.
