My life so far…
I’ve been interested in aerospace since my childhood. While at school I saw John Glenn’s capsule during its brief stop in London, watched Concorde do its first flypast at Farnborough, and stayed up all night to watch the moon landing. I didn’t realize it at the time, but these events were to influence the path which my life was to follow.
After leaving school I tended to follow my interests and take opportunities as they occurred, especially if they sounded interesting. I studied Electrical and Electronic Engineering for my BSc at Liverpool Polytechnic and became fascinated by radio, taking the last written exam for my amateur radio licence. This led me into the world of amateur radio satellites.
After graduating I spent 16 years as an engineering officer in the Royal Air Force, continuing my interested in aerospace and radio engineering. This took me into the world of satellites and networking. On leaving the RAF I did an MSc at Surrey in Satellite Communication Engineering. I subsequently took on a senior technical role in a military satellite project. This consolidated and deepened my interest in of space and satellites.
It was during this time that I started getting into the amateur rocketry scene. Recognizing the potential for rocketry in education I helped to found the UKRoC competition for schools, and worked on and off for eleven years getting rocketry established in the Air Training Corps’ BTEC syllabus.
While working with Airbus I delivered an MSc module in satellite communications at the University of Wales, expanding my technical interests into academic research. An opportunity arose to transfer from engineering roles into research, mainly focussed towards networking UAVs and stratospheric electric aircraft. This led to a PhD at Cardiff in Computer Science, focused mainly on methods for providing internet services from constellations of long-endurance UAVs.
Early retirement took me to visiting professorships in aerospace topics at Liverpool Hope University and the University of South Wales. It also gave me more time to work with schools and youth organizations as a STEM Ambassador. I took up flying radio-controlled aircraft with a view to designing my own solar-powered UAV.
Life in semi retirement is rich and varied. I have no idea what’s next, but I look forward to finding out!