Rupert Wilson
I enjoyed the great privilege of working with Rupert during his two-and-a-half years as an Instructor at FlightSafety, Farnborough although our paths had first crossed - albeit briefly - on 707 Squadron (Wessex 5 AFT/OFT) at Culdrose in the late-1960's.
His long and extremely varied flying career included BAH at Aberdeen, first flying the S61N before moving on to the BV234 where my wife enjoyed many hours flying with Rupert, looking after everything aft of the cockpit bulkhead. As many will be able to vouch, those hours were seldom incident free but Rupert always very calmly applied the best principles of CRM / MCC well before most of us - certainly the Regulators - had thought of those terms.
Although Rupert enjoyed imparting his considerable knowledge to all and especially to the younger pilots with whom he flew, he had not achieved a formal Instructor Rating before joining the Team at Farnborough. However, through his diligent and thoroughly professional approach and at the age of 67, he added both the S-92A/IR Type Rating and the Synthetic Instructor Rating (H) to his licence. Having these paper qualifications was not sufficient for Rupert who then applied many hours of additional study to reach the level of technical knowledge that would meet HIS standards before committing himself to classroom and simulator instruction. Students from around the world have benefitted from - and regularly attested to - Rupert's instructional skills, delivered with his trademark gentle encouragement but always with a very firm insistence that nearly right is never good enough.
This news is quite devastating coming so very soon after the many genuine good wishes for that well deserved retirement with Alice in Melaca. Our thoughts and prayers are with her at this most difficult time.