Born in 1943, this makes Mike the oldest member of the team.

He has lived in the Vale of Evesham, United Kingdom all his life and is married with a son, Stuart, who is also on the team.

Mike attended his first airshow during 1949 at RAF Pershore, Worcestershire (later RRE) and managed to sit in a De Havilland Mosquito. That experience led to a life-long passion for aviation.

He was a member of the Royal Observer Corps during the 1960s which provided opportunities to fly in military aircraft such as the Hastings, Andover and VC-10.

From 1963 to 1970, Mike was Vice Chairman of the Skyfame Supporters Society and was instrumental in helping to save various historic aircraft at the Skyfame Museum (many of which can now be viewed at the Imperial War Museum Duxford). It was during this period that he had his first taste of journalism as Editor of 'Skyfame Circuit'.

During 1971 Mike, along with a friend, formed the South West Aviation Society and was Editor of its magazine South West Aviation News. Being Editor involved him in several media events and flights which included a Army Scout, Navy Wasp and a KC-135A flight from RAF Fairford to refuel A-10As over the North Sea.

During the mid 90s, Mike was a volunteer for the Royal International Air Tattoo selling various aviation publications. He is presently involved with the Fighter Control website as one of their Editors and spends hours scanning and uploading images to Airliners.net (presently over 1300 images dating back to 1972).

His passion for aviation photography started back in the 60s with a very cheap Ilford point and shoot camera which he would take with him to the Battle of Britain shows at RAF Gaydon and the Farnborough Airshows.Back then it was Black and White film with the occasional (very expensive) colour film. During 1972, Mike started taking colour transparencies, firstly on Kodachrome 25 and latterly Kodochrome 64. First camera was a Russian Zenit E followed by a succession of Minolta cameras fitted with Rokkor and Tamron lenses. Mike converted to a DSLR camera during 2003.

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What equipment does he use:

• Canon EOS 10D
• Canon EOS 30D
• Sigma AF 18-50
• Sigma AF 80-400 OS

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What he does for Touchdown Aviation:

Mick is photographer and will cover the U.K. section of the website with reports.