Within today's society you would think that every company, organisation and public building embraces people that suffer with disabilities, and "yes" you say most probably they do, but us as human being's do we embrace diversity and disability on a day-to-day basis? Or is it a case of when it affects us we do? Change is a scary word, which a lot of people don't like and yet at some time in our lives it affects us all and there's not a thing we can do about it.
This article is about a fellow modeller who we will call (PP) who is now in his early seventies and yet for years he was a fitness fanatic just like most of us.
But when change came knocking at his door he had to make drastic changes and adapted his way of life, to make sure he could carry on with his passion for Model flying.
For years now he has struggled with a disability on a daily basis that affects his muscles, which in turn causes him to suffer with muscular issues.
One of the symptoms he suffers with causes him to shake aggressively, and yet he turns up at the local airfield a couple of days a week with a fantastically positive and humorous attitude and flies his aircraft just as well as the next man.
I have known PP for about seven years and when I was first introduced to him we hit it off straight away, he is one of those guys that is so easy to talk too even if you didn't share the same interest with him, but luckily for me I did and our conversations would last for hours.
He has been modelling since the fifties so as you can imagine his knowledge has matured like a fine wine, which has helped me build some fantastic aircraft.
But as we talked over numerous cups of tea and over a period of time, he opened up more about his underlying problems, and how he overcomes them.
He told me how some days he would find it very difficult to even move off his sofa, because his disability made him feel so down and depressed, he mentioned how he felt like his whole body would be in pain.
He also talked about feeling drained of energy so as you can imagine motivation was a massive mountain to climb.
His confidence in his flying ability also suffered, not because of the lack of stick time but mentally telling himself that he physically can't do it.
But as we carried on talking I asked him how he overcame his problems and started to fly again? He pointed out that in some respects he was lucky in the way he was not physically disabled (like in a wheel chair) because there is a lot out there who are and those people do very well.
He went on to mention about a chap we talked to once at an airshow at East Kirkby who was wheelchair bound and the problems he overcame just to get down to his local flying site.
Whilst talking when we're at the flying field we discussed how he struggles with concentration, and the fact he shakes he finds it difficult at times when he is on the sticks controlling his aircraft, but some things can be rectified like the shaking on the sticks by using a neck strap for his transmitter.
This then means he doesn't need to hold the transmitter as much so the shaking eases.
And then the concentration issue is resolved by shorter flight times.
He once said to me " the shaking does have its benefits, I don't have to stir my cup of tea! But CA gluing can be a bit tricky" I suppose this was his way of dealing with it.
He went on to say how he got himself out of his rut, which to us is simple but to him massive, when you think, he went from sitting at home all day doing well not much to start building again, flying and attending airshow's.
The mind set and motivation was tremendous but he achieved it and how this was done seemed so simple, he met someone who was new to building model aircraft, and PP could impart his years of experience and knowledge to this guy, (more or less he brought him under his wing) like a new apprentice.
At the time this guy was building a Mosquito and PP loved that (a Warbird).
And so as the days went on they would ring each other talk about the build, what has this guy got done that day? They would ring about issues to overcome on the build and all the time this was getting PP's interests back into modelling.
Then out of the blue PP decided to start a build for himself and after about a year he had built a beautiful Mew Gull.
Over time this friendship has blossomed to almost a father son relationship with a few adventures on the way, and a few more to come.
But all this was made possible because PP found that bit of light that helped him so much, and all those people out there who are in similar positions who have found their light thanks to model Aircraft.