John was a larger than life character in all senses of the term...

In the eighties John and his then business partner, Andy, bought themselves an early type of hang glider and tried to teach themselves to fly it in a field.

Fast forwards a little to 1990 and John and Sharon found themselves in New Zealand. While there he took a hang gliding course with John Stuart.

He also started out on the process of gaining his Private Pilot's License, but found that he didn’t enjoy the enclosed feeling that came with the typical training aircraft.

Thankfully for paragliding he didn’t try an open cockpit aircraft before he and Sharon had the chance to go to the South Island.

While driving down they saw a hillside littered with ‘Parapente’ as they were known locally. These were the rectangular ‘flying mattresses’ of the early days of the sport. People were being lobbed off the top and guided in by a chap in the landing field armed with mirror bats. John was immediately smitten. He said “I’m doing that!” and from that day on he rarely flew a hang glider again.

Largely untrained, he had a paraglider made specifically for him in NZ and, of course, brought it back to the UK with him when they returned.

There followed a number of misadventures including the infamous time when he was hand tow launching his brother in the Coombe by Lewes and he had a loop in the rope for each of his sons to help hold down the glider. It was only once all four of his sons were also airborne that he decided it might be a little too windy…

It is possible that John’s Christian faith encouraged him in his early flying career to take risks that others would shun. But all ended safely and after a few more misadventures he determined to take a paragliding course with the nearby Sky Systems, run by Michel Carnet, who had brought the concept of paragliding tuition to Southern England from France. After this he became rather more safety conscious…  Though he always remained a force of Nature…

Somewhere along the way he got a second hand microlight but seemingly never sought the license to fly it.

Ever the businessman, John found a way to combine his business acumen with paragliding when he purchased Airworks in 2001 and I joined him in 2002. We worked together to build Airworks into the secure business it is today.

When we were first investigating the possibility of teaching over-water courses in Monaco, we visited with Ozone in Gourdon and then with Bruce Goldsmith in Greoliers high up in the French Alpes Maritime, in January…  John decided that as it was the ski season it would be simpler to wild camp than to bother trying to get accommodation. A very cold night ensued and the morning coffee and hot croissants had never been more welcome.

John showed great generosity of spirit. He was always helping others; Taking inexperienced pilots under his wing. Early in the new millenium he was voted in as the Chief Coach of the Southern hang gliding club and he excelled in the role. As Chief Coach, he helped a great many newcomers to progress as pilots, not just with skills and knowledge but also with how to really enjoy our silly sport…

John was a kind and loving man but believed in tough love; His teaching methods could be acerbic. His criticism of a student pilot’s poor ground handling skills could be meted out sharply; One such pilot remembers being reduced to tears by such criticism but, importantly, says without hesitation, that whilst John’s manner could be abrasive (You can take the man out of Yorkshire, but you cannot take Yorkshire out of the man.) it had the effect of forcing him to ‘dig deep’ and ultimately to succeed.

There are many pilots on the hill who thank John for encouraging them to succeed when giving up would have been the ‘easy’ option.

Even after his tenure was complete he never tired of meeting new pilots on the hill and loved sharing his great skill in and even greater enthusiasm for the sport.

As time went on and the glazing businesses once again multiplied and grew he took a back seat at the school, but was always on hand as a mentor and friend to help in any way he could, with advice and help with everything from building and commerce to occasional flying instruction, for which I cannot thank him enough.

He was an expert at the rather tricky craft of ground handling an extra large paraglider. He had even been known to demonstrate ground handling competence by standing on a fence post on one leg. Never just showing off (maybe a tiny bit), but always to entertain and inspire.

He was ever the first to volunteer to lead ground handling clinics to share those great skills.

One of the current coaching team first met John on top of Mt Caburn. It was a breezy day with just a handful of pilots there. In came John, top landing. John saw them struggling to launch. Each time they tried they were getting lifted off before they could turn to face the way they were going.

Now you have to bear in mind they had never been taught to fly whilst still facing backwards… who has? ...but John showed it was possible and duly launched while still reversed and flew away chatting calmly. Stating that it was fine and not to worry. After a while he casually turned and faced forward. After that how could they forget him!
In the coach's words, he loves flying because of the people he meets during the adventure and John was one of those at the top of his list.

Since that first encounter John continued to help new pilots who needed to enhance their paragliding knowledge. With his assertive but friendly demeanour, he always got their full attention. New pilots and coaches listened and learnt ...

John knew that it was fun to have fun, and more fun to share it with others. He was particularly keen to take people up tandem and would practically drag by-passers from the street to show them the wonder of free-flight.

When John was learning to fly dual, however, it didn’t always go quite to plan. One time he and the pilot in the front seat, the P2, fell over and they ended up face down being dragged towards a fence, with John shouting "get up and run!" and the somewhat lighter P2 shouting back "get off me then!"

Years later, when John was in the front seat training another pilot to fly dual, the pilot failed to make the requisite last second turn into wind for the field he had chosen. With a total weight of almost 240kg coming in fast, and a pile-up seeming imminent, John shouted “Slide!” which they duly did, coming to a rather more graceful if still embarrassing halt than could easily have been the case.

Another dual training incident had a rather less comfortable outcome when the reserve deployed on taking off. The pilot immediately turned to make an emergency landing, inadvertently using John as a crash mat. The pilot was unhurt but the result for John was a broken fibula, more of which later.

Another time a very keen young acrobatic pilot was very keen to perform a deployment bag jump from a tandem paramotor. (Colloquially known as d-bagging, it is like a parachute jump but using a paraglider.) John was happy to oblige and come the day many local pilots gathered to watch the fun.

The D bag was connected to the dual paramotor and the acro pilot to the D bag. The tandem laid out and the motor warmed up. To make the potentially difficult launch easier they picked a gentle downward slope to launch from, rather than the more normal flat field.

John powered up the motor and brought the wing above their heads. On the command of “Run!” they disappeared down the slope at great speed, but didn’t climb out as expected... The acro pilot had fallen over and was being dragged face first down the, thankfully very smooth, grass of the hillside generating just enough drag to stop them reaching launch speed.

After coming to a stop they walked back up the hill with the very heavy tandem motor and decided to give it another go … with almost identical outcome. Strangely the acro pilot lost his enthusiasm for a third try.

We all had a friendly challenge to be the first to thermal out of a particularly shallow training site.

One summer’s day John was almost there, circling just in front of the trees. Until the moment when he flew over the back of the tree line and came face to face with a large beech tree.

He landed perfectly in the top branches, just like a roosting bird.

Because the wing was getting past its sell by date he didn’t bother with the time honoured technique of climbing the tree and carefully extracting the lines.

Instead he decided that the quickest and best course of action would be to just tie a rope to the risers, attach it to his van, and simply pull it out of the tree with the van.

We weren’t all that surprised to see him flying said glider that same evening at Mt Caburn! We were equally unsurprised to hear that it no longer flew in a straight line and now needed immediate replacement.


‘Windy’ John was famed for his willingness to fly in strong conditions. John would regularly launch in seemingly very strong winds to demonstrate that is was flyable. For John of course, it was! In truth a large part of this willingness was due to his larger than life size and thus the need for a fair parcel of wind to keep him aloft, particularly with his early gliders.

So many memories of a great man. Including the infamous words, if it is too windy above cliff height, stay low...

John would never let life’s minor inconveniences hinder his flying: One pilot remembers meeting John hobbling back from Ditchling with his glider, he offered to help, and unusually John humbly accepted assistance, casually mentioning that he was struggling because he had popped the plates in his leg.

Some nervous newly qualified pilots were at Bo Peep and had decided that it was too windy to fly until, walking back to the car park disgruntled and dishevelled, they noticed a Citroen Berlingo van pulling up.

John got out (with leg in a full cast) opened the rear doors and pulled out his stuff sack. The new pilots looked at each other and said “that bloke’s got a paraglider and looks like he’s going to take off – we’ve got to watch this!” Whereupon, John calmly pulled the glider up and hopped off the hill. He flew around for about half an hour before coming to land gently nearby.
With a quick hello and “it’s lovely air, what are you waiting for?” he jumped back into his van and sped off.

John would take great delight in flying just after midnight on New Year’s Eve so that he could be the first to fly that site in the new year.

He enjoyed flying unlikely places, such as Seaford prom when it was particularly windy and a recent storm had raised a ridge along the pebble beach – and other unlikely places such as the harbour arm at Newhaven – Laps around the lighthouse and not once getting his feet wet!

He came on some of the early month-long trips to the Himalaya where he had great adventures and reveled in the social group, yet was extremely homesick and couldn't wait to get back home to Sharon and the boys.

He came on many over-water simulated instability in flight courses where he usually manned the boat. One time in Monaco an elderly German pilot, nothing to do with our group, misjudged the offshore wind and landed in the sea.

Since no other group’s rescue boat was apparent John quickly motored over to the casualty, who by now was only semi-conscious and bleeding from the mouth and nose, and lifted him as a deadweight into the boat. Undoubtedly that gentleman owes his life to John’s quick thinking and superhuman strength.


A gentle giant, with the humility to admit that while he enjoyed flying enormously, he had no interest in competition and all the machismo that afflicts our sport.

He usually flew an intermediate glider, rarely this year’s model, extremely well, be he in his working clothes or his Sunday best if it was flyable weather after church. He was particularly well known for his chrome-plated helmet and, during the summer, the wearing of BHPA approved Safety Crocs.

He would fly his kit until it was absolutely ripe for replacement; He had one particular harness that he found especially comfortable. Until the day when, some two feet above the ground, the hang point, the part that connects harness to carabiner and thence to the wing, failed catastrophically due to a hidden design flaw.

He liked that harness so much that, against advice, he bought another identical one. The trouble was, it was indeed identical and shortly after also suffered a hang point failure just as John was landing from a high flight.

Both of these episodes do suggest that someone was indeed watching over him!

He'd freely admit that he got scared at any more that 1000 feet and would leave perfectly good thermals to come back and play on the hill. Work hard, play hard...

John was a man of very high principles, and integrity, combined with a strong Christian faith and belief. It was these values and traits that were evidenced in everything he did.

The world has been made a significantly better place by John's time here. Many of us who knew him have become better people from knowing him. He will be sorely missed. His positive influence is felt far and wide, and will continue for generations to come.

Everyone who knew John will have his or her own special memories of him. It is these memories we must treasure now.

This is the passing of a legend... but legends never really pass away completely, they live on in the minds and hearts of those who have heard the stories (or witnessed them!)

David Gemmel wrote that “Nothing of real worth can ever be bought. Love, friendship, honour, valour, respect. All these things have to be earned.” And John certainly did so!

Fly Free John!