There comes a point in life when you look back and realise just how many extraordinary moments you've been lucky enough to survive, and how many people helped you get there. For decades I carried these stories with me; the close calls, the improbable adventures, the characters I met in every corner of the world, and the sheer privilege of flying aircraft most pilots only ever dream about. Friends, family and fellow pilots kept telling me, "Peter, you need to write this down".

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So that's what I've done. I wrote this book not to boast, but to preserve a lifetime lived in the sky, the good, the frightening, the hilarious, and the unbelievable. My hope is that readers can feel the same sense of wonder I felt lifting off for the first time as an eight year old boy in a Chipmunk, and the same gratitude I feel today for a career I could never have planned but was fortunate enough to live.

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If these stories inspire someone to chase their own adventure, whether in aviation or elsewhere, then putting them on the page has been worth every minute.

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Peter G Dickens