I joined the Royal Air Force as a weapons Technician straight from school and over my eventual 30 year career I worked on and maintained many different types of ejection seat and crew escape systems.
I spent a few years working on the Mk7 seat as fitted to the FGR2 Phantom where removing seat pans for access was a daily task. From there I worked on the Harrier OCU where we had the Mk9 seats in the GR3 and T4 frames but also the Mk12 in the GR5/7 type. I was also part of the team when the T10 was brought into service with its challenging SMDC command ejection system. I finished my career as the trade manager on a Tornado GR4 squadron where my team were responsible for the routine maintenance of the Mk10 seat systems.
My greatest achievement however was the time I spent at the Defence College of Aeronautical Engineering at RAF Cosford where I was part of the team that taught the principles of operation and maintenance tasks of Ejection Seats to the new breed of maintainers joining the trade. There were some challenging times but I would repeat it in a heartbeat.
