Just over a year later, on 26 May 1958, the second prototype made the first tethered vertical flight. Initial flights of the type were performed while attached to a specially-devised gantry, which accommodated only a limited amount of freedom, up to 15 ft vertically and 10 ft off-centre in any direction, vertical velocity was also restricted to less than 10 ft/second; progressive arresting of the aircraft occurred beyond these limitation. It would take off from a grid platform positioned 6 ft above the ground itself in order to circumvent the ground effect phenomenon; considerable effort on the part of Shorts had been made during development of a suitable platform to eliminate the negative impact of ground effect and was redesigned several times. The gantry facility was used for "ab initio" training and familiarisation purposes for the first 8 pilots to fly the SC.1.