I've always been fascinated with airliners and air travel, ever
since my uncle Panu Guha (an engineer with BOAC) gave me a BOAC Junior Pilot's Log Book when I
was about 8 years old. I read books, built plastic kits of airliners,
and dreamed about flying. In spite of this, I was a very
infrequent flier for many years.
My first flights were on an Aer Lingus Vickers Viscount, from
Heathrow to Dublin and back in about 1962. I didn't fly again
until the autumn of 1972, when Merry and I went to the USA on our
honeymoon. We flew all over -
London-Chicago-Minneapolis-Greensboro-Washington-London, the last leg
on a BOAC Super VC-10. In about 1978 I made a brief business trip to
New York, about which I remember nothing. And then in February 1981 we
flew to the USA, arriving in Boston for what we expected to be a stay
of no more than a few years....
Since then, I have flown all the time (or so it seems). Working in
Boston for a California-based company has meant that I spend much of my
time "riding the bus" between BOS and SFO. In some years I fly
this route a dozen times or more. (I must have racked up at least 100
round trips since 1981.) At the height of the dot-com boom, I was
flying over 100,000 miles a year just on United.
I've flown the Atlantic more times than I can count - I try to get
back to England once or twice a year. I've been to Japan half a dozen
times, Mexico, Korea and Australia each once, and Israel twice.
And I've been all over Europe, from Stockholm to Lisbon. In the
USA and Canada, it's easier to think of the major cities that I haven't visited. For some reason
I've never reached New Orleans, Albuquerque, Philadelphia or St.
Louis. Otherwise....
If I didn't enjoy flying, this would be murder. Fortunately I do.
And it's become a pastime as well as an everyday part of my life. My
favourite airline to fly is United, because on most flights you can
listen in to the air traffic control radio transmissions on channel 9
of the audio system. I often fly the red-eye (overnight) flight from
SFO-BOS [I know, I'm a sick puppy], and before I go to sleep I'll plug
in the headphones and tune in to channel 9. As the plane
approaches Albany NY just before dawn the crew will check in with the
Boston En-Route Center, and I find that the mantra "United 172
contact Boston Center on 126.75" works like an alarm clock. I'll know
that we're almost home - direct to Gardner, then crossing BRONK at
11,000 feet and 250 knots, then down to 2,000 feet, right downwind leg
out over the harbour, turning right base, right again to intercept the
runway 27 localizer, and land just as the sun is coming up. As you can
tell, I love it.
I have a large library of aviation books, both "anorak" stuff like
airline fleet lists and radio frequency guides but also material
related to the business and the technology of the airline business. I
also collect model airliners. I guess I'm not alone in this: when
I started 10 years ago there were few models and the details were
crude.I started collecting 1/500 scale Herpa Wings, and I still have a
nice collection. These days I concentrate on the slightly larger 1/400
scale models from companies such as Gemini, Dragon Wings, Herpa, Jet-X,
Black Box, and others.
Here's a bunch of pictures of airliner models from my collection.
I've saved time by gathering images from the various manufacturers' web
sites, rather than photographing them myself. Most of them are quite a
bit larger than shown here: if you want to see one full-size, just
click on it.
Enjoy.