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How I got here….. Joe Hadley, one of LAA’s graduate engineers, recalls the incidents in his life that brought him to flying and a career with the LAA…
I
f you’d have asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up at age eight, I know exactly the answer I would have given. No, it would not have been a doctor, astronaut nor engineer. I would not even have said pilot. I wanted to be a downhill skier. I’d just been taken on holiday to Vancouver, BC and we’d taken a trip to Whistler mountain. I was fixated by all these people having fun racing down the slopes and wanted desperately to join them. Once home I pestered my parents until they took me for some lessons. Four hours later and I’m merrily snow plowing my way down the slope. Fast forward a few years of training every weekend, plus a trip to Colorado, and I had started to get quite competent! At senior school I’d taken a shine to STEM subjects; maths and physics lessons were a strong favourite of mine and I’d started to become quite academic. I also joined the ski team and planned to join the Combined Cadet Force when I was old enough. Unfortunately, the school’s ski team wasn’t all that much fun to be in and a colleague had injured themself significantly in training. I took a heavy fall myself and broke my femur on holiday in 2010. Perhaps skiing for a living wasn’t meant to be for me…
18 | LIGHT AVIATION | March 2021
Above Getting an invite to the Hellenic Air Force Firefighters on Kefalonia was the closest I ever came to wanting to be a fireman! Here I am sitting in a PZL M18B firefighter.
The Combined Cadet Force
At age 14 I joined the CCF RAF section. Initially a bit bored by spending Monday afternoons stuck in a classroom or marching out in the cold, I held on for the promise of a trip to Cosford and a flight in a Tutor. I’ll never forget that first visit to Cosford. The anxiety of the unknown, the warmth of the crew room (are all bases like that?), the weight of the parachute, the smell of the apron, the sound from inside a helmet. I don’t know why I was so nervous because seeing the world from just a few thousand feet was incredible. The pilot officer in command persisted through my barrage of questions and asked if I wanted to do any aerobatics. After almost toppling my internal gyro and reminding myself which pocket my sickbag was in, it was time to get back to Cosford. I knew I wanted to do this myself one day, so I applied for the gliding scholarships, but this was at the time the Vigilant fleet was grounded, unfortunately they never came back online and the Volunteer Gliding Squadron, as it was back then, was restructured. A couple of flights in a Tutor and a couple of trial lessons for birthdays was all the flying I could get. A-levels were fast approaching, and it was time to look for the next steps in my education or career. If I was asked what I wanted to be back then, I did not know. I’d
