10 years of Aviation Xtended
Pieter Johnson, co-founder of Aviation Xtended
What inspired you to set-up the podcast?
I’ve been a long-time listener of the AirplaneGeeks podcast and the presenter Max has always encouraged people to make their own recordings and send them in. In 2010 I recorded a segment on the Farnborough airshow and it snowballed from there; I eventually became their European Correspondent with a weekly segment called ‘Across the Pond’.
I met Tim Robinson (from the Royal Aeronautical Society) and Gareth Stringer (from Global Aviation Resource) through this segment, and we regularly recorded together, just chatting about aviation topics. Eventually, we found we needed more and more time to talk and interview guests and we grew out from underneath the Airplane Geeks umbrella and set up Aviation Xtended.
Tell me how it has evolved over the years.
Our objective with the programme was to promote the sector, find great guests and tell untold stories, But most important was to enjoy the passion of aviation.
We produce episodes monthly and are now a feature-based programme and have had some amazing successes along the way. Pilots, maintainers, pioneers, and astronauts, we have had almost every sector featured. We wanted to make sure we cover all aspects of aviation and aerospace and there are very few podcasts that cover as wide a spectrum of the industry as we do.
Who has been your favourite guest?
We have been honoured to have had some amazing aviation characters on the show for example Captain Eric Winkle Brown RN Retired who flew 487 types of aircraft, more than anyone else in history! He also flew the first jet on to an aircraft carrier. What an amazing man he was.
We have also had astronauts like Tim Peake and Mike Mullane on the show. Mike was particularly interesting. Author Rowland White regularly joins us and is always fascinating to talk to as he is often working on some interesting angle for a book, that he will share with us and the audience.
What’s been favourite episode to put together?
Our current series on RAF Coastal Command has been highly satisfying as I have needed to do a lot of research into the subject. I’ve read about 15 books to learn how to pull the series together and to know which content and therefore the guests to choose to help us tell the story.
If I look at what my favourite episodes were, I think some might be surprised.
They include Episode 82 Anthony Fokker – The Flying Dutchman. This was quite a detailed look at the character behind the name. I was really pleased with the story our guest Marc helped us tell. I dreaded it when it first came across my desk, as a subject I knew nothing about and did not have an interest in. Marc really changed my point of view and was captivating on air.
Rod Dean in Episode 42 was great fun, talking about his life in aviation. Squadron Leader Roger Cruickshank AFC in Episode 65 ‘Courage in the Air’ gave us a refreshing look at mental awareness in the world of the fighter pilot and going right back to Episode 15 when I talked to Earl Moorhouse about surviving the first crash of a Boeing 747 Jumbo jet, the whole atmosphere of that interview is still slightly haunting.
I know your father flew with Coastal Command in WWII and that you’ve a young daughter who has a love for aviation. Tell me a bit about your family and how they’ve influenced the podcast.
Dad flew with Fleet Air Arm Squadron 822 from RAF Thorney Island in WW2. They were assigned to Coastal Command and were undertaking anti-submarine and E-Boat sweeps across the English Channel. He was my inspiration for a love of aviation. When I was young, he took me to an airport, airshow or museum every week.
It was only just before he passed away, that I learned much of his role in the Navy and you can hear his story on Episode 73 Fairey Barracuda. A few months after he passed away, his pilot Derrick Armson found me, as a result of the podcast. We talked and agreed to meet up to record his side of the story but before I manged to arrange the meeting, he sadly passed away. His story has been recorded by the Imperial War Museum and can be found here. He said his life was saved by my Dad when he and the Observer, ditched their Barracuda that they were test flying. Dad had not been required to fly with them, but rather than go on leave, he stayed and plotted the aircraft course for his own interest and when the mayday came in, plotted exactly where they would be and passed this to the rescue teams. He was right and they were exactly where he said they would be.
I lost interest in aviation during my teens and although I did my PPL training, I did not rediscover the passion for it again, until 2009 when I started listening to those first aviation podcasts. I also had a new daughter and as she has grown up, I have taken her to our local airfield and the last few years we have gone to several air shows together. I wanted to let her see all the female role models in the industry.
I also thought we needed to promote more women in aviation success stories and we featured several female guests last year who told us their stories, which in many cases demonstrated that there is still a long way to go on the diversity agenda to equalise the disparity. This is a topic I am passionate about as coming back to my Dad’s story, being black in the Fleet Air Arm in the forties was not always an easy place to be. He loved serving this Country and was immensely proud of his service in the Royal Navy.
What plans have you got for the future of Xtended?
At the moment we are working on delivering the Coastal Command series which will run in to 2022. This has been a mammoth undertaking with 12 international guests all contributing to different aspects of the narrative. Even though we have around eight episodes on the topic ready to air, we are under some listener pressure to add further content episodes. It is a difficult decision to make to add further episodes, as try to cover all aspects of aviation and aerospace. On that basis we have some exciting guest content in the pipeline to produce. We can often only look a few months ahead, as things change quickly. For instance, our episode on the role of Air Ambulances only came around because I had a personal call on one. (That’s a story for another day)!
2022 looks like it will be another great year for the programme and in May next year we will celebrate 10 years of podcasting.
Lastly, tell me about your favourite aircraft.
That’s not fair as I have several and here’s why! First, I have to pay homage to my Dad’s aircraft the Fairey Barracuda. It certainly wins no beauty parade but was the Fleet Air Arm’s most highly produced aircraft of all time and yet not a single airframe exists today. The Fleet Air Arm Museum are reconstructing one so if you are interested, go and see the daily work being done by the team there. It’s a fascinating project.
Then there’s the DC10 or MD11, my favourite airliner. I’ve only flown once on the type but always loved the scale and dimensions, having those three mighty engines and a big chunky fuselage.
And then there is the military stuff. Where to start? If I must pick one, it has to be the F4 Phantom. In Fleet Air Arm service, I saw them when I was a kid. The sound, the slightly rounded nose, those swept wings and of course the two Rolls Royce Spey engines with fuel tanks and missiles, made this look really ‘badass’!
There are so many I could list here but one of the key reasons I love doing the podcast is that I always get to talk to interesting people about interesting aeroplanes and that is a gift that just keeps on giving. Recently this has led me down routes of aviation I have never before explored such a Luftwaffe aircraft and, Soviet cold war aircraft. Slightly niche, but with the right guest, a real mine of interesting information that has not surfaced through aviation podcasting before. We are proud of that aspect of the programme and it makes us quite unique.
Pieter with a crew member of the the Dorset and Somerset Air Ambulance. Pieter’s recent journey on it provided the inspiration for a recent episode on the role of Air Ambulances.