Albion St
Dunstable
Bedfordshire
UK
W.R. Scott built his first glider at the age of 13 after seeing a film about gliding at the local cinema in his home town of Thetford. This was a hang-type glider of about 30 feet wingspan, and was built out of materials costing 3/- saved out his weekly money. The glider was covered with thick brown paper proofed with terobene paint drier thinned with petrol.
On its first flight the glider was found to be unstable and it crashed after covering a distance of twenty to thirty feet at a height of four feet.
Several more gliders were built, with progressive results, and the last was shown to the Duke of Grafton who offered Scott facilities on his estate at Euston Hall Park near Thetford. Scott then designed and built a tandem two-seat glider which took eighteen months to complete whilst he was serving an apprenticeship in a local garage. The glider flew quite well, being towed by the Duke in one of his racing cars, until it was crashed by an RAF test pilot in Euston Hall Park in November 1933.
Scott built a similar version, using the wings salvaged from the crashed machine, and this was sold to the Duke of Grafton and made several flights on the owner’s estate near Newmarket.
The next glider Scott designed was one similar to the Abbott-Baynes Scud sailplanes. Scott completed the fuselage and some of the wing details, but he sold the incomplete machine to a club at North Walsham, Norfolk.
Scott went to work with Zander & Weyl at their newly established works at Dunstable. Whilst working there he began to build in his spare time three Hutter 17 gliders, two to sell and one for himself. Due to the financial insecurity of the Dart company Zander suggested to Scott that they should set up their own company to build these gliders, and in August 1937 they formed Zander & Scott. Initial production centered around the Hutter 17, for which they held the sole building rights for England, although several primary gliders were also built.
In 1938 Scott designed a high-performance single-seat sailplane. This was named Viking and first flew in November. By then Zander and Scott had run their capital to a very low level but Lord St. Davids offered assistance. He was therefore appointed Chairman of a Board of Directors and the company was renamed Scott Light Aircraft Ltd in December 1938. Several Vikings were then put into production and a two-seat version was designed and built in 1939. This flew for the first time one week before the war started and was therefore the only one of its type to be built.
After the outbreak of the war gliding ceased and Scott Light Aircraft Ltd only ever managed to produce parts and precision tooling.
All Aero 