I had my area youth development officer telephone me this morning. He basically is the guy to help get this club off the ground, as he knows the legalities of what I am trying to do. He may even be able to help out with storage of the craft, class room facilities with toilets etc. The group maybe able to go under the umbrella of High Life Highland which could help with regards insurance , & facilities etc.
The one thing he said that is a must is I need some sort of instructional qualification, to indemnify myself if something nasty were to happen because whatever insurance I had would most likely be nullinvoid without this qualification. Normally the qualification would need to be approved by the national governing body of the sport / hobby, such as the RYA does for boating activities. I explained that there isn't a national governing body that I am aware of for light cruising hovercraft, but the hovercraft cruising club operates a strict code of conduct for its members and run annual training courses. The courses are run over a weekend which takes complete novices to PLs1 which is a basic hovercraft pilot licence. The hovercraft cruising club operate this licencing scheme to allow hovercraft owners to build their knowledge and competence with regards piloting a hovercraft safely.
He said in the absence of a national governing body, then it could be a possibility that the hoverclub training scheme or a manufacturers training scheme could be used as the standard at which the youths are trained to pilot a light hovercraft, as long as it can be proven that the operating procedures are best practice. ( Or something along those lines).
It looks like my next step is to get myself trained, so I can run training courses.
I have the backing of the youth development officer as he thinks this is an excellent idea. He also operates power boat training courses for youths, so basically we could team up so we have the use of one of his ribs etc as a rescue craft.
One other point he raised, is that he maybe able to get a hovpod donated to this project, as he knows of one that was donated to the red cross near me, but they no longer use it. they are thinking of selling the craft, but feels they maybe willing to donate it to this cause.