John MacNamee
John entered his first serious competition in 2005 completing two rounds of British Nationals, making goal in each round and thoroughly enjoying himself as he did so. He was then selected to represent Ireland on the Red Bull Team to take part in Capetown Man Event relay race. This involved a multitude of disciplines including kite surfing, mountain biking, mountain running and of course, paragliding. He finished this event placed 5th out of over 50 competitors. (Maybe an X-Alps Pilot of the future?)
In 2006 he competed in all three rounds of British Nationals and despite a terrible round in Portugal, still managed to take 3rd place in DHV 2 sports class. In 2007 John decided to move up to serial class wings and entered both the Nordic Open and British Nationals. John is currently the number one pilot in Ireland and N Ireland and holds a respectable position within the UK overall. John openly admits that since moving up to serial class he has become a much more competitive and focused pilot with a hunger for success.
John has been part of the flight test team at Short Brothers Ltd (now part of Bombardier Aerospace) for over 15 years, during which he was involved in test flying military and civil aircraft for development and certification. He spent his last five years with the company as an aircraft design engineer, unfortunately the final aircraft assembly was re-located to a distant location and so he has recently left the company. He still remains a CAA approved Compliance Verification Engineer.
John has now chosen a completely different and perhaps surprising career and has now retrained as a tree surgeon. He says that this will allow him more time to fly, we think a good choice.