Pilot September 2017

Pilot profile | Stephen Slater

http://www.pilotweb.aero Pilot September 2017 | 39

Eagle and Biggles stories, WWI and WWII
pilot fiction and non-fiction and a few
non-flying books, including Isaac Asimov.
He remembers, “As a boy I always wanted
to know how things worked. Dad used to
say that if I was bought anything I would
invariably take it apart.” He left school
with ‘A’ levels in geology, chemistry and
mathematics with statistics.
He was fourteen when he first flew in a
light aircraft. As a holiday treat he got a
joy ride round Blackpool Tower in the
back seat of a PA-28. “I loved it, so I went
to the St George Aero Club at Teesside
Airport and asked how much it would cost
for a trial lesson. The CFI, an ex-Squadron
Leader, said it would be twenty-five bob
(£1.25), but were I to put the money into
junior club membership and help him out

in the office he would

sort me out some flying.

So from then on, if ever

there was a training

flight with an empty

seat, I’d be taken along.

In return I washed

aeroplanes, put them

away, answered phones

and so on. In four years

I should think I flew at

least a hundred hours as

a passenger. I also had

some training and soloed

shortly after my seventeenth birthday.”

When he left school, you might have

expected Stephen to join the RAF, or train

as a pilot but, “No, I joined the Royal

Engineers as a potential officer”. I ask him

to explain. “Well, if you were in the

north-east in the mid-seventies, the

choices were the steel industry, mining or

manufacturing, none of which appealed. I

did a parachute jump and at that age

The 90hp Cub Stephen currently flies, bought from ‘Beeswax’ (Alan Chalkley)

in 2014 - a similar photo illustrates Steve’s regular column in Pilot