Andrew's Profile

Born in 1971 Australia. Both Parents had immigrated from Malta in 1965.
My first Aeronautical experience was at age 5 when my family went on an overseas holiday. At the age of 12 I launched a hand made parachute from the roof of the family home and caught a thermal current....i became intrigued with air flow and simple parachute designs.
I was inspired by my cousins interest in radio control and on my 15th birthday my father bought me a four channel radio control set,which I installed into a powered RC plane. It was un flown till I moved up to the far north coast age twenty one.
I first flew powered RC in 1992. I experimented with Scale, Canard wings and 3 D and later slope soaring gliders that I flew at lennox head land. During the modeling years I met Eddie Gray and formed a strong mate ship. We agreed to take up Hang gliding and before I knew it he’d done a tandem while I was on holiday in Melbourne. On return we commenced a course and like 2 children our passion for the sport took over our lives.
In 97 I took up paragliding and for some months flew both hang gliders and paragliders. After an Overseas trip to Europe in 1999 I began my apprenticeship teaching with Sydney Paragliding. In 2001 I learnt how to fly paramotors and I started my own paragliding school, based in Mullumbimby with the intension to specialize in paramotors. I became passionate about paramotoring after being inspired by Graham Sutherland a close friend on the sunshine coast and possibly the most experienced inland pilot to date in Australia. We have continued to inspire each other and we make the trip anualy to the Pico Festival in Milbrilong near Wagga Wagga taking turns driving and flying.
I started flying the Flyke in 2002 being self taught the learning curve was steep. I flew to Germany in 2003 and got some lessons from the Factory however after that flew the flyke seldom.
The opening ceremony of the 2007 Paragliding World Championships was the motivation that I needed to teach Eddie how to flyke. After only a few hours of experience Eddie spoke about Flying to the next paramotor fly-in at Milbrilong 1042 km from Mullumbimby. A typical student, small experience is often coupled with large dreams......it didn’t take him long to convince me to come along. This Flyke Journey rivals all my flying adventures to date as well as being an amazing personal growth experience.