My fascination with aviation and everything aircraft related began at an early age, looking up to the sky at the sound of a plane going over the back garden or the memorable visit to the Royal Air Force Museum in Hendon. I would then get home and then build my own aircraft from LEGO®.
I would also build anything from my first book of combat aircraft I bought in the 1980's. This was full of different aircraft types. These were in the form of small profiles and complimented with some text describing the history and various details referring to the wingspan and length, this book also had various cutaway drawings which even though being complicated were interesting at the same time.
Shortly after this I began building or attempting to build Airfix kits, with early ones ending up with a mixed result on "build quality" mostly too much glue in the wrong place. However, one of my much later builds was the Avro Lancaster at a scale of 1:72 in the markings of WS-J with serials of PA474, I was quite pleased with the result.
Although I have not studied art or design, I have always been creative and whilst sat in from of my computer one lunch time in 1994 I created the very first profile as one single image before individual layers. This was a 24 bitmap (BMP) drawing of the Avro Lancaster using a basic computer drawing programme which for some reason I had drawn shown going left to right.
All the time books and later Autobiographies were gathering up space on bookshelves and cupboards, and new books and reference material is released, this can be using C-ROMS or watching the most eye-opening DVD showing the winter service carried out on PA474 between October 2006 to April 2007.
Moving forward to 2002, this image now has a very small amount of lighting to the top and does have a slghlty better shape, you will the large date gap here, reason being there are too many development drawings.
By 2018 I started using new software and the start of the Vector profile of the Lancaster, this was from the start built in individual sections to match the actual construction, this also made the amount of work less complicated.
The fuselage is in 5 main sections with the inboard and outboard engines on another drawing, the Main Spar and inboard engine were the first section I worked on as they are the backbone of the profile which the rest of the detail depended on.
Over the years from 2019 I started to see big changes being made to the profile, constantly pushing myself further to see what is possible. Moving to the current profile, some 32 years later which does make me feel very old now, I often look back and thinking how did I get here, I would say not giving up and be passionate about what you do.
I have several folders full of deployment prints, this one of "Mickey the Moocher" complete with pen scribbles of numbers and how many pixels. These alterations which were constantly changing, did not really change anything.
The reference material I have now collected is extensive and showing its age with many pages with coloured notes stuck on the top. This does not include the old photographs (some 35mm prints) that were taken at Duxford over ten years.
The defining moment was seeing the Avro Lancaster of the Battle of Britain Memorial Flight flying with the Canadian Warplane Heritage Lancaster at the Imperial War Museum Duxford during their 2014 UK tour.
A big contribution and information used in creating the profiles of the Battle of Britain Memorial Flight Avro Lancaster PA474 "City of Lincoln" came from the many journals by being a member of Lincolnshire’s Lancaster Association since 1988.
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