MY OTHER PASSION IS...
After a longheld fascination with engines, Loris Goring has now turned his attention to the rather more peaceful world of engineless gliders
Men keep their secrets in sheds but as a boy there was no chance of my hobby remaining secret. The tiny model engine I fired up on the kitchen table made enough noise to wake the dead. My love of engines of every kind has never deserted me. As a young man I took to motorsport when I lived in Singapore and bought a Triumph TR2 sports car before I could even drive. I am still a life member of the Karting Club of Singapore and enjoyed racing a souped-up lawnmower engine that won me a trophy or two. So it was no surprise that when I moved to the UK to live in Brixham, Devon, the next engine I acquired was in a motorboat.
Mi Amor was a 21ft cruiser fitted with a two-litre BMC Commander diesel engine. It provided me with the dual challenge of looking after a leaky clinker wooden boat and an engine that, like most of its ilk in those days, was a marinised car engine. Corrosion was a constant battle as was the poorly installed fuel system and exhaust. The first winter the Commander came to my workshop, I stripped it down completely, rebuilt it and painted it to look like new.
The engine worked a treat but after a month-long cruise I’d emerge from the cramped cabin hunched over like Quasimodo. Something had to be done so I spent three and a half years building Sea Hound of Dart, a 31ft Tyler Goring
Hardy motorcruiser with twin Perkins diesels and full-standing head room.
New boat completed, I returned to my original boyhood hobby – building model aircraft. This time the attraction was greater as radio control had advanced to such a degree that flying the models was akin to flying a full-sized aircraft. Pilots had control of rudder, elevator, ailerons, flaps and engine throttle. Some larger ones even had fully retractable undercarriages. For those with a deep pocket, you could even buy a 200mph jet turbine.
But while I loved the thrill of flying these amazing machines and the engineering finesse involved in their construction, a lesson in a glider, the beauty of silent flight and the challenge of finding thermals to gain height, proved even more arresting.
Now I balance the love of engines with model gliders boasting wingspans of up to 12½ft. These are launched with an electric winch, which I also built in my workshop. Once powered up it hauls my gliders up to 150ft before they slip off the hook leaving the line to float gently back to earth on a parachute.
The challenge is to find a thermal to keep the glider in the air, although as I’m lucky enough to live by the coast I can also use the rising air blowing up front of cliffs or off the slopes of Dartmoor. I have even watched seagulls and buzzards using lift and then flown out to share it with them. From one of the noisier hobbies in life I’ve moved to one of the most peaceful, and it’s all the more enjoyable for it.