Story of my life ?......well, some of it...

Born and grew up in Stjørdal in Nord Trøndelag in Norway.
And a really happy childhood it was although somewhat noisy.
The then Air Force base housing a F-86 fighter squadron on one side of the road and the railway almost in the back garden. It had of course some influence on what eventually became of me.
Torn between the thought of becoming a fighter pilot or a locomotive engineer, I decided to become an electrician...

So leaving school, I pocketed the most rotten diploma ever seen in the school's history and moved to Oslo to start my apprenticeship as an electrician.

But I finally made it and along the way used more than a years salary to buy a motorcycle which was THE greatest passion for many years.

One day the dreaded letter from the Armed Forces dropped down in my mail box. My services was wanted by the Royal Norwegian Air Force for a period of 18 months, and guess what. The place where they wanted me to turn up was the very airforce base where I grew up. I guess that must have been a mistake. The military has the habit of sending you as far away from home as possible, but since I was living in Oslo at the time maybe they thought it was far enough.

So I saddled my Suzuki 750 and went off to start the basic training.

The marching and shooting was quite fun as long as the weather was fine, but living in a tent in -25 degrees wasn't that great. Along the way the officers managed to persuade me, and I guess I was a bit interested too, to join the Air Force to become an aircraft technician.
And then I found myself at Kjevik where the Air Force Technical Schools are located. Learned what makes an aircraft fly and how it works and then I got REALLY interested....

I ended up at Ørland Air Force Base as a Crew Chief on the Northrop F-5 Freedom Fighter.

Eventually I thought it was time to put my electricians skills into practice and by a tip from a friend, I got a job as an electrician in a coal mine in Longyearbyen, Spitzbergen.

I must admit that I was only in it for the money at first but after a while I discovered what a beautiful country Spitzbergen is.
My good friend Gunnar, who by the way is still living up there, and I went on snowmobile trips almost every weekend in winter and in the summer we used my boat. I mean it, the landscape up there is SO great. In the meaning GREAT. It's not possible to explain to someone who has not been there.
I really love it, the landscape, the silence, the loneliness.....

Another good thing about working in Spitzbergen was that the holiday lasted almost two months and you made money enough to afford it.

One of my holidays I spent on a Yamaha XT600 Teneré crossing north africa from Marocco to Egypt and another holiday was spent in Florida learning to fly helicopters

But all great thing have an ending and a woman is involved some times.
I got the choice from my then so beloved of either staying in Spitzbergen, or coming back to Norway. First choice ment "game over".
Went back to Norway, the relationship lasted mearly a year of course, and then I was back to square 1.

A man has to do something and I elected to go to Lebanon as a UN soldier. Was serving in a special platoon as a systems expert and spent most of the time travelling around south Lebanon in a jeep with a sleeping bag, my gun and some spare parts helping those who had problems with their equipment. This was during the time when Israel invaded Lebanon and it was quite an exiting time. Or as they say, never a dull moment......

It was an interesting and teaching experience. I got to see most of the Country, learnt a lot about other cultures, other people and myself.

Here is a representative of the "enemy".

After my tour was over I went back to Norway for a holiday and in the autumn went to Gothenburg in Sweden to spend some years at school trying get a degree in aeronautical engineering. Which I got, a very good one too, just to brag a little.

After spending some time in Kiberg in Finnmark, northmost in Norway (seem to like extreme places), where I among many things spent six weeks on a schrimp trawler in the Barents sea, I managed to get a job in a small helicopter company which was fun but unsure way of living financially so after some years I got a job at the Civil Aviation Authority in Oslo as a Technical Officer in the airworthiness department.

Made it to Airworthiness Inspector in the Maintenance Section where the main tasks were auditing of airlines and workshops.
I also voluntered to be responsible for the experimental aircraft activity in Norway which included homebuilts, warbirds and other fun flying machines, North American AT-6 Harvard, P-51 Mustang, DeHavilland DH-100 Vampire, DHC-1 Chipmunk...
I miss it......sometimes..

Today I am back with helicopters, and aeroplanes too for that matter and it's great :-)