ATTENTION potential new members. If you are a retired or near retirement professional engineer or related professional and would like to join the club, you will be very welcome. We only mention retirement or near retirement because our meetings are held on Monday mornings- if you happen to be free on Mondays and are not near retirement you would still be very welcome. Email the Club secretary on honsec@rcec.co.uk for information.
Please note that the website hosting is in the processs of changing. Possibly as a result, the security certificate is no longer valid, but this does not affect a user of the web site as we do not store or accept any private or financial information. It may be difficult to access the site if you use Google, but when the warning comes up from Google, click on "advanced", then open the site. We expect that this situation will be resolved shortly.
Our next meeting will be on Monday 14 October 2024. The speaker will be Brian Fernley of the South West Airfields Heritage Trust. The talk is titled "The amazing Mr Cotton". This was the name by which Ian Fleming referred to Sidney Cotton when they worked together in military intelligence during the Second World War. The story of Sidney Cotton is quite remarkable from his early days in Australia, learning to fly in the great war and hunting for seals in Newfoundland. From there he went on to spy for the secret service and develop aerial photography beyond what the RAF was capable of at the start of the second world war. In the post war period, he was involved in gun running for what he believed was a noble cause in addition to being profitable! Sidney Cotton was a remarkable man who made and lost fortunes many times over and lived a life few of us can imagine.
News See news archive for previous entries. See also Blog page where you can find out about our recent excursions.
On Monday 9 September 2024 Rodney Battey gave a talk entitled "Surface Phenomena in Engineering: adhesion, friction and lubricity". This was a most interesting talk about various materials, how they bond, types of glues for particular materials, the benefits and disadvantages of friction and much else. As usual there were interesting and challenging questions from the knowledgeable audience.
Our Club
The Club was founded in 1986 as the Retired Chartered Engineers' Club to provide a social meeting place for retired and semi retired professional engineers and a means of keeping in touch with achievements and developments in engineering. The Club has links with other organisations including the University of Exeter. We meet at the Exeter Golf and Country Club on the second Monday of each month, and occasionally organise site visits and social events.
Membership is open to mainly retired or near-retirement Engineers (we meet on Monday mornings!) and related professionals resident in the South West and currently includes more than 50 representatives from the Aeronautical, Chemical, Civil, Electrical and Electronic, Communications, Gas, Marine, Mechanical, Petroleum, Structural and other disciplines. Prospective members are welcomed as guests at Club events. For further membership information email the club secretary at honsec@rcec.co.uk
You can also download a membership application form here:
Members assemble from 10.00am for an informal tea or coffee and the meeting starts promptly at 10.30am when short reports concerning Club business are presented by the committee. This is followed by a talk of approximately 40 - 60 minutes on a subject of engineering interest usually given by invited speakers or sometimes by members. Topics have been as diverse as nuclear fusion reactors and Roman aqueducts.
Social events take place throughout the year and technical
visits are arranged for the summer months.
The Heritage Trail section researches the achievements of engineers with local connections and where appropriate arranges for the erection of plaques in their memory. The link is at heritage
There are Clubs similar to ours in other areas of the UK and a list of those known to us may be reached via the Links page in the main menu. The LINKS page also has links to pages such as a photo gallery within this web site.
