A Year and a Bit

2026 January 7th

So, it’s early January 2026. About 17 months ago I realised there was something wrong with me, 16 months ago I was told that it might be cancer, 14 months ago I was told it was cancer and the extent of it, and 13 months ago I started my treatment. A year and a week ago I got up on New Year’s Eve and prepared myself, more than a little nervous, for my first session of chemotherapy.

On New Year’s Eve last week, I got up and prepared to pick up an aeroplane I part own from maintenance, air test it, and deliver it back to our home base at White Waltham. That didn’t actually go to plan (nor did my chemotherapy a year before), but the day after, the fog around London had cleared and I managed to fly our baby back home. She was, I’m glad to say, flying very well and a new instrument we’d added to the panel working perfectly. (For my fellow aviation nerds, we’d replaced the mechanical DI with an AVCOM AV30 configured as an HSI.) That is quite a year’s journey.

A decent case could be made that 2025 was the most stressful of my life (maybe equal first with 1996 when some military flight test training went rather badly for me, but that was a long time ago, and I’m a very different person now.) It has left me feeling exhausted and fragile.

2025 has been a year of achievements for me. The minor ones are worth listing, as on a normal year any one of them would stand-out. I was elected a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy here in Britain, and of the Society of Flight Test Engineers in the USA. I was awarded the Jesualdo Martinez award for my work in flight test (it’s only awarded every two years, to a single flight tester in Europe), and the Royal Aeronautical Society written papers prize (for the second time). And of-course I got promoted to full Professor at Cranfield, which I’m very proud and pleased about. Looking at the spreadsheets where I track this stuff, I also flew just under 85 flying hours, ran 539 miles: an average of 10.4 miles a week, and was co-author of a couple of new research journal papers.

None of which is particularly front and centre in my consciousness. The only success that really matters for 2025 is beating prostate cancer. I’ve gone from somebody with stage 4 cancer, a deformed prostate and tumours right through my pelvis and torso, to somebody whose blood tests are coming back with the magic word “undetectable”. Nothing else really matters does it.

This should be a cause for a celebration, and indeed in October I invited a bunch of my family and friends (many friends came, and a few family) to a “Guy Kicked Cancer” party at my flying club. I really can’t overstate how psychologically important that was for me. At the end of a journey that was draining and and sometimes seemed never ending, letting my hair down with 40 people I really care about was an amazing and liberating experience. There were people who when this cancer journey started advised me to plan for events and rewards, and this was one I’d been thinking about for months. They were absolutely right - finding those psychological break points is really valuable. If you’re going through a similar journey, I can only commend this as excellent advice. If anybody you know is doing this, try and support them - even if that’s just turning up and drinking their beer.

On the day of the party, I also collaborated with two charities: Civil Air Support (which I’m a trustee of) and the Graham Fulford Charitable Trust, plus my flying club (West London Aero Club at White Waltham). We organised a PSA testing event that men could come to, including flying in - trying to take this message to the flying community who really need it. We got 50 men tested, one of whom has told me privately that he’s been referred since for an MRI scan. I really hope in his case it turns out to be benign, but if it’s not, well we may have saved a life there. There are plans to build on this for some bigger and better events, both at White Waltham, and other places this year and beyond.

There are a bunch of cancers, including prostate, that have a higher incidence in aircrew than the background population. There are several unproven theories about why that’s the case, including proximity to radiation emitting cockpit equipment, altitude, and chemicals. [If you want to read more on that, have a look at the website at https://www.acesand8s.org/ . The Aces and Eights Foundation are an American charity, borne out of a community in the US flying military who got together a few years ago and compared notes, with some concern, about their relative cancer rates.] Also they’ve been looking into the fact that male aircrew tend to have more daughters, but sadly having no children myself, I can only take that on advisement.

This starts to knock against an important question in my mind as I enter 2026. What is my mission now? Remember missions, very fashionable for organisations back in the 1990s, and still a concept that’s useful. I’ve never been somebody who just pitched up and did stuff for the money (if I was, I might make more money, have nicer aeroplanes and a nicer house, not that I’m actually complaining about any of those). So trying to get the cancer testing and awareness mission out to my fellow aviation professionals is definitely part of my personal mission going forwards. I didn’t know as much about cancer as I needed to when I got into this strange journey, and I’m absolutely certain nor do lots of other people. So let’s get this message out.

I’ve set myself a few other objectives as well. If you’re reading this, it’s probably quite obvious to you that I quite like to write. When I got derailed by the cancer, I was working on a third edition of my textbook Initial Airworthiness, which I last updated in 2018. I have restarted work on that with a view to getting it published this year. I’ve also pushed forward the throttle on publishing a novel I’ve been working on for the last six years, so hopefully this summer I’m going to see that hit the streets. You heard it here first, but I’ve written the first of what I hope will be a series of air accident investigation thrillers, starring my fictional protagonist Dr David “Indy” Jones. I hope that I can get that out in “all good bookshops” about May.

Is that enough? Well it really should be, but I absolutely MUST NOT stop supporting my inner man. I’ve decided to switch my exercise targets from a running-mileage target to an exercise-calories target of 3,000 per week, equivalent to running about 20 miles. Will I hit that? I don’t know, but I’m going to try.

And that, absolutely, is enough targets thank you very much. Two books, normal work stuff, promoting cancer testing for pilots, and 3,000 calories of exercise a week. If I show signs of setting myself any more targets than that between now and next Christmas then please, somebody, take me aside and tell me to just slow down. I do not need any more targets - I just want to reach 2027 sane, healthy, still employed and maybe with a couple more books on the shelf. It’s enough.