“On swept and delta wing, I saw the world where the atmosphere joined space, where flying alone, awe overcame fear. I felt euphoric and privileged. This was my high.” My time has flown – David Robson.
I’m afraid this article read ‘meets’ Pili Robson, who was David’s wife for 28 years and has provided the detail for David’s fascinating life. For David sadly passed away on August, 7th, 2023, Brisbane, Australia. He was 78.
However, most aviators as well as future pilots both in this country and Australia will continue to ‘meet’ David in his writing, for David was a formidable author of over 20 aviation text books and publisher for many more and one, whose writing, I have continued to recommend to my students throughout my career. David had the unique skill which made everything he wrote appear simple, logical and understandable. His writing skills were as unique as they were thought provoking. He once wrote:
The key to happiness: is
to make the next hour
a happy hour for
someone – anyone
anywhere.
David’s list of achievements is awe inspiring. He was a pilot, a flight and ground instructor, a business developer and entrepreneur, a test and fast jet pilot, an author, a publisher, a celebrated poet and an accomplished artist. He was also a designer, an adventurer, a philosopher and a humanitarian. I am proud to say too that he was also a friend.
I first met David in Adelaide, South Australia in a small town called Parafield, home to a large Commercial Flying school - a quarter of a century ago. It was the second time British Airways had chosen to send some of their ab-initio students abroad to train for their Commercial licences and BA insisted that each college should visit their sister schools to learn and benefit from how they ‘did it’. I was duly despatched to the Australian Aviation College (AAC). It was a sensible move as the college was impressively run and David Robson was a key part of their management team. I could see easily why BA had chosen the school.
It was David’s job, as Business Development Manager, to encourage airlines to consider AAC as a suitable foreign alternative to train their future pilots. He was very successful in this regard. The college was full. He and I shared similar positions and, in part, backgrounds and we immediately clicked. As was I at the time, David also was a keen runner and we would run along the banks of the river Murray chatting and panting in equal measure. He was an interesting man with a fascinating history but was always very modest about his achievements – as ex-military personnel often are.
When he came to the UK, a year later, to look at our college, I reciprocated his friendliness and invited him to go running with me around London and along the Thames. He was, of course, more familiar and certainly more knowledgeable than me about London’s history. David was very ‘smart’ with a precise memory and recall of facts and figures which I had long forgotten or possibly never knew! This came from his strong interest in people and places and the fact he was born in the UK.
David’s career and life are as fascinating as they are enviable. It is rare to meet someone so accomplished and with such a diverse range of interests and projects. “David was always busy.” explained Pili as we discussed his life. “Even lying in hospital in the last four days of his life he was working on a project to provide housing for the homeless. He never stopped.”
David was a large but gentle man physically and with a personality to match. His nickname in the Australian Air Force was ‘Lurch’ and this he kept until he died.
Born in 1944, in Malden near Kingston upon Thames, David was just 17 when he made his first solo flight in a de-Havilland Chipmunk. When David was 6, his parents had emigrated to Australia. But in 1950, following a family emergency, he found himself returning to the UK and, whilst there, started flight training at Biggin Hill. He was then awarded a scholarship and soloed in 1962 in the Chipmunk. He then returned to Australia where he completed his PPL. He was hooked. Aviation was going to be his career.
Back in Australia, David joined the Commonwealth Aircraft Corporation as a junior draftsman before enrolling as a direct entry pilot in the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF). It was the 27th August 1965. David was just 21 years old.
His initial training was on the ‘Winjeel’ at Point Cook and then Vampires at Pearce.
His abilities were quickly recognised and David was streamed to fly fast jets, fighter training and conversion to the Sabre.
In 1965 he was posted to RAAF Butterworth in Malaysia with detachments to RAAF Ubon with No 79 Squadron and then to RAAF Williamtown in Newcastle, Australia where he would test fly the legendary Mirage fighter.
He went on to survive 240 missions as a Fighter Pilot Controller during three tours in Vietnam working in conjunction with the USAF and as he saw it ‘a fight for freedom.’ This was supporting Australia’s involvement in the Vietnam war. It was the late 60’s and David was now still only in his mid 20s. His role, as Forward Air Controller, flying the Cessna Skymaster marking targets, involved reconnoitring sites for some 80 air strikes before eventually returning to Australia where he joined No 77 Squadron back at Williamtown. Forward Air Controllers survived by flying low and slow. It was dangerous work that David did not expect to survive.
Back at Williamtown, David was selected to join the famous Australian aerobatic team, the Deltas flying the Mirage 3. As well as many shows, David performed during Queen Elizabeth 2nd’s Golden Jubilee tour. David logged over 1000 hrs on the Mirage and some 500 on the Sabre.
In 1968 David made an unsuccessful record breaking attempt flying a balloon from Perth to Sydney with two other RAAF pilots. He was greeted by the Prime Minister - to be - Gough Whitlam. This showed the adventurer in David. ‘Better to try and fail, than not try at all’ was his enduring attitude.
In 1972, David was chosen for test pilot training at the UK’s if not the world’s most prestigious test pilot school, ETPS, at Boscombe Down near Salisbury. Here he would fly a variety of types from gliders to Hunters, Canberras, Lightnings and Argosies before returning to Victoria’s Laverton Air Force base where he put into practice the research and development skills he’d learnt at Boscombe.
It was at Laverton and an airfield called Avalon where he continued to fly the Mirage and most of its variants and the push-pull Cessna’s 0-2 aircraft, the military version of the Cessna Skymaster, the twin which flies like a noisy single.
David went on to manage trials in Canberra yet still found time to simultaneously complete a bachelor’s degree in
Industrial and Graphic design. His interests were wide.
His last military posting was with the Australian Aircraft Consortium at Woomera in the South Australian desert where he served as Resident RAAF Manager on the Wamira Trainer Project.
He was now 41 and decided it was time to leave the air-force. He had reached the rank of Wing Commander. As he would continue to say of the Air Force and to any young person looking for a career in aviation. “It’s an amazing career and a great place to start. It gave me direction, purpose, pride, respect and a bucket full of exciting flying.”
Having left the Air Force, it was then he joined the Australian Aviation College in Parafield near Adelaide where he started work as a flight instructor, progressing into the role of Business Development Manager. David would teach the first course of Qantas Cadet pilots, many of whom remained close friends. At one stage he was responsible for over 200 cadet pilots and 35 aircraft. He remained with the college for ten years during which time, he saw its growth under his direction and enthusiasm.
It was also about this time that David became interested in writing and he was appointed Editor of the Aviation Safety Digest for the CAA in Australia where he would receive the Flight Safety Foundation Award for the best aviation safety magazine.
Sadly, it was around this time David’s first marriage left the centre line. In a similar situation, he met Pili, who herself had emigrated to Australia when she was just ten. Both single and looking for more, they jointly invested in a small but developing Aviation Publishing Business together – the Aviation Theory Centre. The business association became a romance and Pili and David became Mr. and Mrs. Robson.
David’s ability as an aviation writer had been known to Trevor Thom, the Aviation Theory Centre’s founder and then owner, another famous Australian Aviation Author.
When Trevor suffered a bad accident, David and Pili eventually bought the entire business from him and continued to run and expand it.
Tempted by the better weather, Pili and David decided to move the business from its Melbourne home to Brisbane and the more reliable climate of Australia’s Gold coast.
Between them, David and Pili continued for another nineteen years publishing an impressive variety of training manuals for recreational, commercial and military pilots.
The quality and credibility of David’s aviation writing had been demonstrated by the fact that the RAAF’s Air Defence Force adopted the entire set of David’s 13 primary textbooks as their own. The same books are still in demand world-wide.
David’s legacy as a teacher and a writer will therefore continue long after his passing. The Theory Centre continues to employ some 20 plus sub-contractors writing, proof reading, typesetting and illustrating their expanding set of manuals. It still operates today although it sold its European publishing rights to Pooleys.
“David had an incredible thirst for life.” Pili explained. “Even lying in his hospital bed with just days to live he asked the doctor if there was anything which could be done to prolong his life a little more? “He still had projects he needed to complete.” As Pili continued, “Even if he’d been given another 10 years, he would have still had projects to complete. That was David”
David had always believed ‘he would not make old bones!’ He in fact never thought he would even return from Vietnam, but of course he did. Consequently, he was determined to live every day to the full and as if it were his last.
That last day did eventually come when he finally succumbed to pancreatic cancer. He had previously successfully fought prostate, bowel and liver cancer as bravely as he had lived his life - but this battle would be his last.
David’s memory and legacy will however continue in his aviation writing, his art, his poetry, his children and his grand-children. I still remember his gentle laugh and his smile, his wisdom and his friendship. In July, just one month before he passed, I tried to make contact again, not knowing he had become so unwell nor realising the family had moved to Brisbane. The years go by so quickly. Sadly, I did not try hard enough to make contact and it’s taught me a lesson once more. ‘Don’t leave till tomorrow what you can do today; no-one knows how many tomorrows we have.’
At David’s funeral, donations were requested for the Royal Flying Doctor Service of which David was a great supporter. His life was remarkably full and successful. It had its challenges and disappointments but his achievements have absolutely outweighed them all.
I’m proud to say, I knew him.
In his words from a poem dedicated to his wife:
When I die, so let it be
Think of me occasionally
(and tell the kids about me)
I regret the times, we will not share
But treasure those, we did.
Farewell my love.