Mike's Flying

So, what does one write on an about page?

Well, A little about me and why I’m writing this would seem to be a good start.

Andrena and I at the summit of Tryfan, North Wales

About Me:

I’m 21, born in humble Peterborough. Grew up in a small village called Heckington, and since then I’ve lived in Wooton (near Abingdon), and more recently I’ve been back in Peterborough. At school (sixth form at The King’s School, Peterborough) I attained modest A-levels in Maths, Physics and Biology (lets not even mention General Studies, eh?) – Grades B, C and D respectively. Despite this I’ve always had a strong interest in Science and its trappings and am always on the lookout for new sources of completely impractical information to read and feel superior.

After School, I started to work full-time at a local Airfield. Working on the ground as a refueler and in the hanger as a (very) amateur mechanic. The work was fun and the people were great, though the pay was abysmal and so after a year I gave that up and started looking for a way of actually paying the rent. This led me (eventually) into my most recent position, as a peon at a Data/Mapping company in Peterborough, namely Technologies 4 Targeting who allowed me to hone my web design skills and in my time there I developed a few major web-based mapping systems, including one large, fully featured Web Application by the inventive name of Territory Manager.

From this background, a few people ask me why I decided to make the leap, take out a colossal loan and submit to 14 months of Professional Pilot Training in the south of Spain. Well, the answer is a simple one: The opportunity presented itself, and I took it. It’s something I’ve been wanting to do as long as I can remember (originally the post at the Airfield was an attempt to gain some relevant experience). Though I’ve developed skills and interests outside of Flying, and even started out on what was sure to be a lucrative career in web development, I’ve always turned back to flying. In all honesty, I’d rather try and fail than fail to try.

This brings us nicely back to the point of this page, I’ve been kicking about for a full 21 years, and I’ve finally managed to get myself going down a path to somewhere I really want to be. In light of this, and because It’s an interesting experiment, I decided to write about my experiences on the way to, and hopefully as a Professional Pilot.

How to use my Blog:

My Blog is split into sections (“gategories”), each category relates to a different topic covered in my writings. These include web-development, anything actually related to the blog, my day to day posts and updates, and photos of various kinds.

When you first visit the blog you’ll see the latest post (from any category) displayed at the top. If you wished to see just the posts from my day to day category then you can go and click on that in the ‘Categories’ menu on the right hand side.

Commenting requires you to be logged on and to have had at least 1 comment approved by me before comments become automatically added to the Blog, I’ll check daily to keep the time for this approval down to a minimum. Please, do comment if you feel like it, I’ll not deduct marks if it’s not witty or full of apropriate insight, promise. Also comments serve primarily to boost my already planetary ego, so the more the merrier!

Lastly, if you’ve any suggestions or questions, don’t hesitate to get in contact with me – the best way is via comment, but you can also e-mail me if you take the time to dig my e-mail address  out of this site (it’s on here, I promise!).