Guest Speaker: Tony Burton

Tony Burton is a retired CF (and RCAF) officer living in Claresholm since 1980. He has long been active in many sporting and organizational aspects of soaring. He soloed in 1968 and has about 3600 hours in 46 glider types including 480 hours of instructing time. Tony is particularly active in cross-country and contest flying and in making record attempts – it keeps skills sharp and the mind focussed, he says. He has recorded about 87,000 km of cross-country flights (three over 700 km) that include many competitions and 22 national records to date.

While serving as a CF Exchange Officer in the USA in the 70s, he built a glider in which much of the above flying was done. He currently flies one of the smallest sailplanes on the market, the Russia AC4-C, which has a 12.6m wingspan and weighs only 350 lbs.

In the mid-1980s he was the organizer and project pilot for the joint Canada/US "Chinook Project", in which an instrumented 20m sailplane (the Alcor) was flown to gather high altitude atmospheric data. These flights were made from Claresholm and High River.

Organizationally, he has run two national competitions, wrote a manual on contest organization, was the Executive Director of the Alberta Soaring Council for 18 years, has been the editor of the national magazine Free Flight since 1982, and is a member of the international committee that writes the rules governing the sport.