Oodi Sibeliuksen maalle!

That's really nice! The PC-12 was a type that "grew on me". I didn't like the looks much at first. I had the pleasure of being able to fly one for about 3 years and ended up loving it. I was always nervous about the single engine coupled with the kinds of missions the aircraft is designed for. It's very capable of single-engine flights across Europe (and beyond, the max range is about 1700nm but they seldom ever go that far), but you have to picture yourself about to cross the Alps at night, on airways, so you're clear of the cumulo-granitus, but you're on just that one engine.

They're very reliable but not infallible.

The difference in daylight is that you can at least look for a place to crash.

Boutique lost one in Texas a while back, and sometimes this happens...

The Twin Star has that redundancy but is overall less capable (altitude and speed), and the option after that is to spend a lot more money. Textron has rebadged the Cessna Denali as a Beechcraft, which shows the market they're shooting for. Probably doctors graduating from the SR22! So there's definitely a niche. I'd just think twice about going at night, given the option.

The AIG model really needs some repainter love.

Yes, the AIG is the AI model. Generally I fly smaller types in the sim as much as I will fly the heavies, so seeing a few more PC-12 liveries would be a bonus for me! There are quite a lot of repaints around now, but usually US-registered. I've set up rather few in my setup at the moment and might modify some liveries painted by others so that I have some fancy generics flying around, then try to flightplan the global fleet (at least, those still without flightplans)!

I learned to fly when I got my first job (USA). Before that, I'd met a British family in the UK that I saw a lot of, and they were so much involved with aviation that it really stirred up a passion for flight, and seeing so much of Europe from the pointy end of aircraft was like throwing gasoline on a flame. So, when I was 17 I was almost immediately given my license having started training when I was 16. Cherokees, at the time. When I moved to the UK I immediately joined a club up at Manchester International (North West Flying School, long gone) and gained a lot of experience operating around the airliners. It was a dual runway airport even then, but at the time it was 06-24 and 10-28! My first solo flight in the UK was to a PFA rally at Sywell, near Northampton, in the late 70s. I also flew Grummans, AA-5A & B, until poverty took charge. Family contacts in Europe got me some memorable flights, including one from Rotterdam to Seppe, where on the return leg (in a DR400 operated by Stichting Vliegmatriel - PH-SRG) we were formated on, briefly, by a West German Air Force (as it was then) Phantom! Flaps and gear down, it was really struggling to stay airborne, while we were at about 140 knots! Then up went the gear and on went the afterburners and off he very audibly went. On another occasion I had wangled some contacts through my CFI at Manchester that allowed me to fly some of the British Aerospace vintage fleet at Hawarden, so I managed to get hands-on with an Auster, something else I can't recall (my older logbooks are elsewhere right now) and Tiger Moth (G-ANTE) at the time in a tasteful green and cream livery. Beautiful airplane! On my checkout, the CFI passed me to fly and then said "but never do this..." and proceeded to strafe the clubhouse in low runs, yelling "takka-takka-takka-takka" over this little side mounted radio, with the guys coming out of the clubhouse waving fake rifles that were probably mops! At one point he snuck between two of the old wartime hangars by the clubhouse - below the roofline - did a skidding level turn and strafed in a "surprise attack". I never did that, or anything like it.

I didn't fall straight into work as I thought I would due to a change in government in the UK (I had a job to come to, but it disappeared) so there was a spell without flying and with some serious struggles. I still flew often enough to stay current, volunteering to ferry aircraft for "people who knew people". I'd played music in the US, in a club band, and managed to get "work" as a musician, and made something of a career of it (radio, tours, interviews, etc) before landing some IT work a few years later. I thrived with that, and it was an avionics company based at Rochester airport, one that offered employees a generous annual flying allowance! So I was basically then flying for free as part of my work and spent a lot of time airborne (either that or playing music in Kent and London). It was there that I learned aerobatics because I had access to a Stampe, G-ASHS. Married, we moved away to Bath and I started my own business which went well, and flying then became a big part of my time in business, and after a few years I could finally buy aircraft, or lease them as needs be, mainly at Gloucester, then also at Filton, which was opened at the time, and also a farm strip close to where we live. When business really picked up I could be more hands off and live in other places on and off, and the airplane became a business tool, which after a few others such as the Seneca, brought me to the PC-12. I did also have a fraction of a Citation I/SP for several years (1/4 share, while the owner had 1/2 and 2 other people had 1/8 - this predates the boom in fractional "ownership"). It was the success of the company that bought all the flying experience even though the music got more attention! My wife had learned to fly while in Kent, so there was absolutely no resistance to any aviation plan I could come up with. We flirted with the idea of living either in Italy or Switzerland (Italy, easy, Switzerland, not so much!), but since I was getting more interested in the music angle, we decided the UK was probably the best option, but had a bit of a "fling" with the Caribbean, living in St Lucia and island hopping regularly there with the help of a British engineer who'd naturalized St Lucian. He used to fly to the shops on a Saturday morning from Castries, because 20 minutes away he could land in Fort-de-France and go to Carrefour in Martinique! I still wonder whether he had to declare his cans of beans to customs on return to Castries! The lives people live!

We flew back and forth between St Lucia/Barbados and London quite often. Sometimes the flght schedules demanded that we staged through Barbados if the timings were critical. The flying there was some of the best I ever got to do. We had a long hiatus from aviation on return to the UK because of that. The UK seemed over-regulated and it took a while for the joy to return. I then took time out to fly for a charity, since I was feeling rather useless and "at a loose end" in the noughties. Although the business was still running, it was on autopilot by then, the hard work was being done by other people, and I was getting back to music. There's something like a 3 year gap in my postings on AIG during the period of that work! I did some commercial license training in Germany before going to Africa with Her Ladyship, but she came home after a year and I soldiered on flying in a very challenging environment, mainly because when you volunteer for something you have to be much more committed than if you were paid to do it! The commercial license was new, but there was a lot of experience gained beforehand. Fascinating aviation environment and a close community. I met the full gamut of human nature there, from a Canadian pilot that fixed a flight for me in Canada at the controls of a Dash 8 (well, for the easy bits) to a soldier that wanted me dead (I wouldn't fly him to his supply of hookers, I guess).

I came back to the UK and thought I'd use my license to carry on flying, and have had a few happy years flying turbine twins until Covid hit. Since I was a contractor rather than employee the work was infrequent enough to be enjoyable and I got to see a variety of operations, but with Covid, I was either back to flying myself around and losing the commercial privileges through disuse, or doing something else. So I tried instructing and gave it a good shot (I'd been doing it before Covid but after that it took over). The King Air & equivalent work dried up - the first people to go are the contract staff, the phone just stops ringing. Instruction was not really my thing. I got on well with pupils, but its very repetitive and really more for 20-somethings to get their hours built before graduating to Ryanair or Easyjet. It did however keep my commercial qualifications alive, until last summer, when I decided that those days were done and that I should think more about music. So I spend time making noise again, and my flying is now just one piston engined aircraft, and the occasional other type thrown in for variety.

Oh, and ferries. I did 4 proper ferry flights, starting in 2018. Two transatlantic in singles, and one in a King Air, and a Twin Comanche from the USA into South America that I'll simply say put me off flying for quite a while!

So I'm not certain whether I have had a life in aviation, a life in music, or a life in business - but it has been fun. Business made me money, music made me grow up and yet stay young, and flying made me happy. My problem is that for me to be more productive, I need to be less happy.

Well, that's my life laid out and my soul laid bare. I wonder what I should do tomorrow?!

Music! I got into jazz via Allan Holdsworth, now sadly deceased. I was bored with what music was doing. Rap had saved the pop side of music but very quickly got into a rut and quite derivative, but the business was always about appearances anyway, so the music was "playing second fiddle" to the personalities. So I looked around for inspiration elsewhere and found Allan. I had the great fortune to meet him on a few occasions and enjoy a beer, but he was so self-critical about his music, and sometimes even his playing. But he had a true gift and a unique way of seeing the fretboard and envisioning scales, hence the nature of his music.

That led me into jazz (but only as a listener), but I prefer the areas around the edge where the cars are up on cinder blocks and the nights have scary sounds and everything is a bit less satisfied with itself! For example, liking Pat Metheny but preferring the scary end of town rather than the elevator music.

Back on aircraft for a moment, Metheny was the soundtrack for a pinnacle of my aviation life, the first time I hit Mach 2. Small pastry with caviar in one hand, champagne in the other, and "Follow Me" (from the same album as the above) on the headphones, with a dark purple sky outside and a glaring white wing. It was quite literally heaven. I've seldom been that happy! (The caviar wasn't very nice, but the champagne took away the taste...!) January 1998. Photo of our flight is on a.net.

Aviation Photo #2041978: Aerospatiale-BAC Concorde 102 - British Airways

Heading from T4 to 27L DEP - Photo taken at London - Heathrow (LHR / EGLL) in England, United Kingdom in January, 1998.

www.airliners.net

I contacted Alan Best and he kindly sent me the original. We're pretty much above the MLG. Row 21. I sent him the full date details but he obviously decided not to update them. I'd looked at the line of aircraft heading to the holding point and realized they were the same as in the film I took, so I checked every departure that month and ours was the only one with that sequence of departures at the same moment! Yay! The Barbados run. BA2155, I think, the usual flight number. We swapped seats halfway across and she had the view for landing. After that, it became a ritual. My wife is addicted to altitude and the things that get us there.

Years previously, mid 80s, when we were going on honeymoon to Switzerland, my wife had insisted that we flew out on a BAe 146 to wherever 146's went! At that time the choice was Stavanger or Bern, so we went to Switzerland and spent a couple of weeks close to the Hunters at Interlaken. We got into the pointy end for part of that trip as well, since the guy we'd known in Manchester (UK) when I was a kid, who'd recently died, had worked for them, and we were "known" when we came up on the passenger list and were offered a few minutes up there just before top of descent. My wife had insisted on the 146 since we'd visited Farnborough the year prior, and seen a "turning & burning" display with an F16. We were impressed (and I was working on an F16 HUD at the time (for extra points)) but then up went the 146 demonstrator and did exactly the same display, turns almost all within the airfield boundary - with none of the noisy drama. Her ladyship beamed at the audacity and said "I want to go in one of those, they're fantastic!". And that's how we decided where we went on honeymoon. No "pin in a map" for us!

She's more of an aviation fan than I am, in many respects. I guess because I worked in the area and she's always been happy to be a fan and not even think of the work side, the metronomic passing of medicals and tests of my own. She just likes finding a crevasse in a cloudscape and sliding down through it, spelunking the heavens. We try not to share the same interests in most respects, but aviation is the exception.

My only actual IT these days is the coding behind this spreadsheet I've been pecking away at for making flightplans. It was originally based on Rysiek Winawer's RPP generator and with his blessing I mutated it into a Frankenspreadsheet. I started running my own company because I was being promoted to admin roles and didn't like the idea that I was no longer hands-on. I veered off into Business Analysis briefly but quickly decided I was better off keeping my hands dirty and "doing code". The business mushroomed and is now run by other people, and I'm actually in a process of divesting from it to free myself up for something else, which might just be retirement and the odd music project. I quite fancy video game soundtracks.

I used to have no patience for music that wasn't actually played by a human being, and some suspicion of individuals that sat alone creating parts that are impossible to play by anything other than a machine. And one day I thought about flying. We dream about flying but can't humanly do that except in our dreams, so why make a fuss about a bass drum sequence played so quickly that even an octopus would ask to be excused. We can't humanly do it, but we can make a machine to do it for us. After all, I can still admire Diana Ross and Ella Fitzgerald!