07-12-'07
Well I guess we're at that time of year when loads of money's being chucked around, much of it wasted, and no short amount being gained through deception. Throughout the year we hear the stories of one person or another having been duped by whichever latest is doing the rounds, the Spanish lottery winner scam seems to have taken quite a few in. Though in that case it appears an unfortunate mixture of greed and stupidity have conspired to bring the situation upon the hapless victims. How do you fall for the idea that you've won a lottery you didn't even enter, and then, and this is the bit that really baffles me, send these bogus lottery agents money so that you can have your 'winnings' sent to you. In some cases these 'agents' have their victims over and over again, coming up with new reasons for the 'winner' to send on money to ensure the safe passage of their 'windfall'. Don't get me wrong, these villains are scum, often preying on old and vulnerable people that can ill afford to lose the nest egg savings, but it is sometimes difficult to have sympathy with such blind stupidity.

I myself have a yearly letter from one such band of thieves, 'Domain Registry of America' requesting that I fill in a form and send payment for the annual renewal of my web sites. This company have absolutely nothing to do with my web site suppliers www.2minutewebsite.com , but had I been daft enough to have filled in the form and paid up, I would also have been signing my sites over to them, so I'd have lost my sites and paid for the privilege. Clearly these people have a degree of success otherwise they wouldn't bother with it, but not with this punter, this time. I'll be forwarding their letter to the appropriate authorities soon.

Then I began thinking of so many other scams I've been hooked by, or nearly so.

The earliest proper scam for me was a transit van driven by some Irish lads, pulled up alongside me as I was walking through town, 'aalroyt there fella, would yez be wanten sum cheap but classy carpet there mate', and young muggings as I was, innocently never having been duped before, went along with their seemingly honest patter about the carpet being over ordered from a plush job out of town, 'we can't be taken it back wit us sunshine, sure n it's a grand opportunity for yez so it is'. They even drove me to my building society to get the money out. I remember the look of horror in my older and wiser brother, Stig's, face when he saw me returning home with these lads in their van, 'put them fuckin' carpets back in your van, he don't want them' he spat out with unveiled digust, he already knew them for what they were. But here's the bitter twist, out of sheer stupid pride, and determined that I knew better, this was elder brother younger brother stuff, 'he can't know better' (he did and I was stung). So there you have it, as they were driving off counting their takings, doubtless grinning, and on the lookout for the next dopey fool to take in. The carpet was thin, cheap, warehouse floor standard, I think it cost me a couple of hundred quid, back in about 1982, but it was the lesson I learnt which I would say made the experience worthwhile.

Not long after that, during the following Summer, I had an Italian, driving his Alpha Romeo, pull up alongside me while walking along Shoreham Beach. As he pulled over the first thought is 'he'll be wanting directions', but no, stereotypical looking Italian, black silky long ish hair, smart appearance, he starts straight in with some spiel about coming back form an Expo somewhere or other, quickly flashes me some exhibitors badge, and explains he's been selling these fine leather jackets, but now he's returning to his native country and has these 'spare' jackets which he'll have to pay duty on if he takes them back with him. Would I be interested in taking advantage of this one off opportunity to buy one of these fine Italian leather jackets he had laying on his back seat sheathed in a plastic protective dust cover. They did indeed look fine to these untrained eyes, but I was both skint and uninterested, so I politely declined. As it turned out, I wasn't the only person he approached that day, he'd clearly trawled all round Shoreham Beach in his search for victims, he also tried it on with my brother Stig, and obviously got nowhere there. But our Italian con man did trap a victim eventually, my sister, Lizbet's, ex husband, (husband then) Dave proudly showing off his flash new jacket to all down at the Lady Jane pub. It looked fine, it just wasn't leather.

Now these are small time scams, the step up in my personal experience, unfortunately came at the expense of my parents, and involving Irish road workers this time.
We'd all left home by now, so were unable to do anything about the situation until it was too late. Irish fellas turn up at the parents door, 'hello there sor, we're joost werkin along da road tarmacin', and we've some spare, wid yez be interested in us tarmacin' yerz driveway sor?'. Sure enough dear old Da had long wished to do just such a thing, but not got around to it, so this seemed an ideal opportunity to get it done on the cheap. I remember turning up and seeing these lads hard at it laying tarmac, and thinking, 'so the Old Boy finally got round to it'. Well it barely took a week after he'd parted with £6000 cash, and they'd long gone, that weeds started to spring up everywhere through the tarmac, they hadn't prepped anything, just threw it down over whatever the surface was. We were all seething with anger at these scumbags, but couldn't say as much in front of the Old  Fella, because we knew it hurt him to have been so badly duped.

But that wasn't the end of it, this filth obviously have a well worked network, and soon enough he had another knock on the door, 'ah grief der Sor, dat's a terrible job a yez driveway soomwuns made der so it is, wid yez like us to come in and put it right for yez?', I don't remember seeing this lot, but they fleeced another £3000 out of him, but this time the weeds took a little longer to come back through.

Another incident, I'm afraid to say, involving Irish lads again, had my mate Dez, a roofer,  buying what he thought was a tasty looking digital camera for £100, he'd held it, tried it out, paid up, and quite happy. Until, that is, he opened the box to show off his acquisition to his lad, only to find a stone inside, probably removed earlier from the beach.

I love the Irish people, but NEVER, EVER, have anything to do with a fella, (in this country), with an Irish accent, knocking at your door trying to sell you anything, especially if his spanking new 4 by 4, or transit van, has a 'motorway maintenance' sticker on the back window.

Most scammers rely on a certain amount of greed from their victims, so you'll always have a degree of guilt in your head that perhaps you deserved to get turned over.  But remember, these people are at it 24/7, they're masters at their trade, and most of all, they prey on decent people that don't spend every waking hour mistrusting everything they're surrounded by. It's an unfortunate fact of life that as long as there are decent folk around, then there will always be these parasites looking to scam them. That's one of the biggest reasons that I very rarely trust anyone with too much chat, always saying how good they are at this or that, these are the sort that make up the largest percentage of scammers. Many of this breed go on to be unscrupulous salesmen, looking for a legal way to scam, flogging whatever the latest commission based product is out there, often major utilities companies, water, gas, electricity, satellite tv, which these speed bullshit merchants get to represent. You'll often come across them stood outside your major out of town shopping centres, intimidating old people into listening to their patter. If you see them, complain to the store, if enough people do then you deprive these parasites of one of their favoured stamping grounds.

Basically, never let anyone rush you into a decision, the more pushy they are, the less you should trust them, the sooner they can blag their victim, the sooner they can move on to their next. I've only covered the scams I've personally come across, and not all of those, I hope this will be a wake up call for those blissfully unaware of such goings on.

If any of you would like to share your scam experiences, I'd love to hear them, and if they're worth it and you don't mind, I'll post them on this page for others to check out and be forewarned.

Wolf-e-Boy :-)

This is the story of someone, who, one day decided they wanted to become an airline pilot, and did so. After their first lesson aged 40, they followed a well-worn path at Shoreham, from private pilot to instructor and ultimately the right hand seat on the flight deck of an airliner. More potential airline pilots pass through Shoreham Airport than probably any other airfield in the country. Sky Leisure Aviation has the facilities to flight-train someone with no experience right through to holding a commercial licence that would enable them to apply for an airline pilots job.

Its’s not cheap and takes a fair amount of dedication, but the pilots who train with us come from all walks of life. Sky Leisure is part of the Redair Group that also has bases at Redhill and Blackbushe Airfields.

Shaun’s route to the cockpit of an airliner.

In March I started a new job with BA Connect, flying the Dash8-300. Amidst the happiness of securing a job with an airline, I have to admit to a great deal of sadness in leaving Sky Leisure. I’m sure I don’t need to say any more about the excellent and happy atmosphere, and the quality, humour and friendship the people (including the members, of course!)

I had been teaching at Sky Leisure for about 3 years (…and I never meant to become an instructor – honestly!) As a parting shot, I thought it might be useful if I gave a short summary of my flying career to date. I hope this will encourage some of you (even those on the “greyer” side of the drag curve!) to continue with your flying and set some ambitious goals, and to reassure you that perseverance and sheer bloody-mindedness do pay off in the end.

Despite my youthful looks, I am now 46, but took my first flying lesson when I was 40, in March 2000. I had a vague idea that I wanted to fly for a living, but not possibly until I was 50-ish when I could retire from real work and potter around in a bizjet or something similar. I then had a wakeup call from a career consultant who told me to get off my backside and get a move on if I wanted to fly professionally – so a new plan was hatched.

I completed my PPL (Private Pilot Licence) December 2000, (mainly at Redhill, but at Shoreham when it was very wet!) Along the way I picked up a class 1 medical (get it early folks – that initial hearing test won’t get any  easier!), then started studying for the ATPL(Airline Transport Pilot Licence) exams in the same month. (Distance learning, with Oxford – I was in the classroom on a revision course on 9-11). Meanwhile I continued with the day job (IT sales) and started to build some hours towards the magic 150 to qualify to start the CPL, including gaining my Night Qualification.

In 2001 I decided that being in IT sales was killing me faster than my landings were, so I dumped the job in favour of contracting as a management consultant/interim manager. In actual fact that gave me more flexibility to study for the ATPLs, (mainly on the train to Victoria) – and I passed the first 8 papers in October 2001. More hour building, contracting and studying (on the train) followed, and I eventually gave up work fully in May 2002 to concentrate on flying and commercial training full time. The last 6 ATPL exams were passed in June 2002, followed by a couple of weeks in Florida, hour building (very enjoyable), and the famous Redhill flyout to Santander in Spain. August 2002 saw me at Stapleford to start the CPL (Commercial Pilot Licence) course, which I completed in 3 weeks (lucky with weather!), then on to the multi and IR (Instrument Rating) training. The CPL and multi were fun, and whilst hard work, were not too difficult to master.  The IR, whilst again thoroughly enjoyable and stimulating, was, however, another story! It was particularly tough because I had not done an IMC rating, and had only ever flown a 180 degree instrument turn during PPL training.  I was warned when I embarked on the whole commercial flying escapade, that I would need lots of determination, and it was the IR and the bad winter weather which taught me just what determination really is!

Eventually I scraped through the IR in March 2003, and had a look in my (now cavernous and echoing) wallet….. I had intended to enrol on an MCC (Multi Crew Co-operation) course following the IR, but felt that the vacuous job market and even more vacuous wallet would make the MCC a poor investment. So I took a deep breath and embarked on the Flight Instructor course with Martyn and Dorothy at Sky Leisure – and the rest, as they say, is history – they haven’t been able to get rid of me since!

The instructor course was stimulating, fun and probably the best flying course I’ve ever done. I was fortunate enough to be asked to start work at Sky Leisure shortly after qualifying as an instructor, becoming a full-timer in May 2003.

At Sky Leisure I have been given every opportunity to develop my skills, both as an instructor and as a pilot. I added CPL, multi, IMC and IR teaching to my portfolio, and was added to the Redair AOC as a charter pilot

In summary, the last 3 years have been the happiest of my entire working life – thank you to all at Sky Leisure and Redair, and to all of the students and members with whom I have flown.

If I may offer some advice to any members willing to listen – please do take every opportunity to continue with and develop your flying, whether to convert onto another type, onto the Piper Arrow, perhaps an IMC rating and a Night Qualification. I would certainly recommend that you consider a multi-engine rating, even if you don’t intend to use it a great deal in anger – it will sharpen up your flying in the singles and contribute to the overall objective of having lots of fun in safety. I’d even go as far as recommending the CPL to you (assuming you have time to study – perhaps an option for early retirees?) Again, even if you don’t want to fly professionally, the course will do your flying the power of good. And please do participate in the flyouts and social events, which I know that Stuart will be organising regularly.

Thanks again, and good luck to you all!!