Page 5 - Dear aviator...

All of this was contributing to that malady that most of my friends and family were
defining as a mid-life crisis. Obviously I never considered it as such. The decision to
enrol in this 2-year course was dictated out of a latent passion for aviation which
had been an on-again off-again affair since I was 10 years old, and out of the
acknowledgement that this would have been my last real chance at taking a stab at
doing something really special and beautiful and at having a chance of making it
into a profession.

Thus, the decision was made to initiate a profound change in my life, a change not
only in the hand of cards I was dealt, but in the deck and the game entirely.

Thus, an archaeologist, a teacher and a musician decided that it was time for him
to follow a boyhood dream and become a professional pilot.

The bug bites

So, where did the passion come from?

I was lucky enough to travel by plane with my family since my very early childhood
due to my father’s job requiring frequent international travel. The airport and all its
associated sounds and smells have always been familiar to me. Driving there in the
early hours of the morning, checking in, walking through duty free, grabbing
something to read, going through security and waiting at the gate whilst watching
these enormous incredible machines through the large terminal windows. By age 8
I knew my 747s from my DC10s. I remember going to see the flight deck a couple of
times during the trip, at a time when that sort of thing was still possible.
But I wouldn’t say I had been bitten just yet.
I believe the point of no return was crossed a few years later when my family and I
were living in the United States close to an Air Force base and we constantly had
F15s and F16s flying overhead. Every few months the base would have an open day
or an air show day and my dad would invariably take me there. During the same
period, we would go to the local radio-controlled model airplane field and watch
these scale marvels zip around the sky.
My parents began to feed my growing interest with books which included full-
colour technical publications of military and commercial aircraft. My mum was
nurturing a more historical side of things and gifted me books on the history of
aviation and to this day it is a subject I study regularly and eagerly. It was also
mum who purchased my first “how-to-fly” book at age 12. It was an Italian manual
on how to operate ultralights. That’s where I got my first taste of aviation
definitions and technical language. That’s where I learned about the four forces, the
main instruments and how they worked, the basics of aircraft systems. I’d say that
the peak of my early interest in aviation was between the age of 9 and 16. During
that period my dad and I started looking at the feasibility of getting a licence
together. I remember he was considering buying a kit plane in co-ownership with a
family friend who already had a private pilot’s licence and flew out of the local

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