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Introducing the databases

Who are we?
Although neither of us is a pilot, we are both passionate about gliders, big and small. In 2009 the two of us met whilst at the Rétroplane meeting which was held in Ireland that year. Claude lives in France and Jean-Marie in Switzerland.

Jean-Marie (on the right) and Claude [July 2016]

Jean-Marie's Library
Jean-Marie has, over time, built up an impressive library that focuses in particular on old books on gliders. He soon recognised that he should make the effort to reference this collection.
Claude' Background
For his part, Claude has gradually collected over the past ten years, all the information on gliders that he could find. With the explosion of the Web, the volume of this material has grown rapidly and the need to digitalise it quickly became obvious.
Pooling our resources
When we met at the Rétroplane meeting 2009 in Ireland, we discovered that many scale modelers had trouble finding support documentation when building new model gliders. Therefore we decided to pool our resources and create a website to make this information available to the wider glider model community.
The structure of our website
Our site consists of a database that covers three main subjects:
- Machines.
- Personnalities.
- References.
Note that these three subjects are interconnected to allow the user to find, for example, the books dealing with a machine or glider designed by a particular person.
Access to information
Visitors can access the data in two ways:
- via a general list or
- using the search function with multiple criteria.
The results are presented in a page that contains a number of links, giving access to other records.

Site content and updates
Updates to the database is an ongoing process and we recognise that we cannot do it alone. Hence anyone who can contribute to improving the database is invited to do so by contacting us, so that we can continue to build it up. We will be truly grateful for any contrubutions.

[Warmest thanks to Alison W.J. and Emmanuelle B. from the J2mcL team]