Chrysalide: First file

Chrysalide: first project

Federation news15 November 20233 min read

We have set up the Chrysalide programme, which lets clubs restore old aircraft with financial help and advice from our Federation, with the aim of opening our activity to the more modest among us. A first programme is being studied, on an experimental basis, to restore a Weedhoper with a team of young people from Corbeil-Essonnes. Feel free to get in touch to tell us about your project.

In 2019, we presented to Corbeil-Essonnes town hall a project aimed at young people who had difficulties at school in the context of traditional teaching. We wrote at the time that reality had to be turned into a dream, and we proposed to work on 3 main areas:

Have them take the aeronautical initiation certificate
Have them build “their” own machine to fly
And finally introduce them to piloting, which we then called: “The part of the dream”

Supported by the State under the urban policy for priority neighbourhoods, we formed a partnership with the Léopold Sedar-Senghor lower secondary school in Les Tarterêts, Corbeil-Essonnes, where we started construction with the enthusiastic backing of the teaching team and the participation of “difficult” pupils or not.

Our young people are wonderful! And since then, our first build has left the school and flies proudly from the La Genevrelle microlight base at Maisse (91)

But we had to keep our word and motivate them at every moment during the 3 and a half years the construction lasted.

So we acquired “53 DR”, a faithful Weedhopper that let them get a taste of the joy of flying. Our Weedhopper was so successful that it “grew old in the harness” and there came a time when we had to stop flying it.

It was about to suffer the sad fate of the forgotten when we heard about the Federation’s Chrysalide programme, which consists of “giving new life to “abandoned” machines”.
So, full of enthusiasm, our young people set about dismantling it to give the machine a complete examination of all its parts and to replace those that were out of tolerance.

Girls and boys took to the task seriously, and finally the verdict came in: everything could be reconditioned.

The fabric needs replacing and we will have a specialist do it; the engine will be sent to “Loravia”, who will overhaul it to 0 hours.

It will take determination, but our young people, whatever people may think, do not lack it.

And we will not stop there. Taking as our principle the words of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, who held that “The future is not foreseen, it is prepared”, a second microlight, a wooden one this time, is under construction at the school. And the work is going well!

Here again we want to see it through to the end because we sincerely believe these young people are “worth it”.

But that is not all!

Summer districts

Thanks to the ANCT’s “Quartiers d’été” (Summer districts) scheme, we managed to take nearly 80 young women and men flying in each of the summers of 2021 and 2022. In 2023 no fewer than 138 young people from the City’s Priority Neighbourhoods “discovered the sky”, to the great delight of most of them. We are sowing the little seed, and for some it has already sprouted.