Along with being a role-model for all of us, I think thay Rod had two wonderful qualities, the first of which was his ability to bring people together.

Most of my memories of him are times shared with other people, many of whom have already contributed to this book, doing things around the flying. I flew 66 times with Rod during my time on MASUAS, but this was not what I most valued about him. The most memorable of our flights was a trip to RAF Sealand from RAF Woodvale on 15th June 1995. We did this purely so that Rod could arm-twist the administrative staff there to release some money to help fund a hiking trip to the French Alps. Funding secured, 6 of us MASUASians (?) spent 2 weeks together in the mountains.

Rod’s second outstanding quality was his ability to make the extraordinary, ordinary. Flying, sailing and skiing seemed perfectly natural to us fortunate bunch. When Rod hosted my family and I at Brooklands in May 2019, I saw exactly the same reaction in my children; sitting in Mika Häkkinen’s Formula 1 car and the cockpit of the Concorde were perfectly normal and natural things for them to do.