Ever since I can remember I’ve enjoyed being creative, innovative and practical. When I was very young, I had an endless resource of wood in the back of my Dad’s barn which I would nail together with the result of a sore thumb or two! After watching the 1965 spy movie 'Operation Crossbow' a V1 flying bomb complete with launch ramp was one such project. At age 8, models would begin to actually work; a model catamaran from plastic 'five pints' powdered milk bottles and dishcloth sails came complete with its own self steering wind vane which operated the rudder to keep it on course relative to the wind. I was pretty good at rowing after these models, because they weren’t going to turn round and come back!  As I got older, radio controlled model aircraft were a favourite, one of which I designed from scratch. A school technology project lead me to use the mast of a Laser sailing dinghy to mount a two meter, three bladed wind turbine which I designed and built to drive a car alternator, picked from the scrap yard. Nobody wanted to stand too close to this thing when it really got going!

I strongly believe that these interests as a child combined with my formal engineering studies and training helped me to bridge the gap between being creative and innovative and being analytical.

Scott Tuddenham and I go back quite a long way, since we studied together. At the time, I had a passion for hang-gliding and when I wasn’t at University, I was working for Pegasus Aviation - Solarwings who were, at the time, one of two major hang-glider manufacturers in the UK. Since their R&D department was down to three individuals during term time, they decided to offer a sandwich placement to someone on my course (Aerospace Engineering at the University of Hertfordshire). They chose Scott.

After graduating I started working at Racal Radar Defence Systems in Crawley and joined their IMechE scheme where I became Chartered four years later. They became Thales Sensors which allowed me to move to Basingstoke to join Thales Missile Electronics as a Senior Mechanical Engineer. Now I am working as a team leader for Prospect ,an engineering design and analysis provider to the world energy industries, headquartered in Aberdeen.

back