About The Author

Doug Worrall lives in Australia and is an airline pilot, website designer, electronics engineer, cartoonist and aviation educator. Doug is a married to a great gal and has two fabulous kids. Here are some words about Junior Flyer from Doug…

Junior Flyer grew out of a desire to create a place that makes learning about aviation fun and entertaining.  From my own experiences teaching people about flying, and from the joys of explaining science to my kids, it became clear that complex concepts can be taught in fun, visual ways.  Our Flight Science section is an example of this technique, blending visual description with humour which, I hope, makes the bitter pill of science easier to swallow.

Another goal of the website is to bring together some of the fabulous aviation resources now available on the Internet, from YouTube videos through to research links, news and discussion.  The Net is a fabulous resource but the good bits can easily be lost amongst the noise.  Consider Junior Flyer to be a filter for finding aviation resources that are both fun and educational — but don’t look for anything heavy… we don’t take ourselves too seriously around here!

Yet another goal for this website is to showcase the work of others, from reviews of aviation books for young and old, to links for excellent aviation websites, blogs and podcasts.  There is a range of great work being done to keep the love of aviation alive; I hope we can introduce you to some fascinating and entertaining resources that you didn’t know about.

Finally, no discussion of aviation would be complete without remembering the history of flight.  In this regard my aim is to illuminate young minds with stories of courageous aviators — some famous, others not so.  I present a single page introduction to a number of flyers, along with videos, images and reference links to assist further study.  Each aviator shown is listed by year… while many aviators had careers spanning many years I have endeavoured to pick a year that might by considered as their pinnacle year of achievement; many paid a high price for trying to recapture the glory of that year.

Aviation, however, is about more than pilots and planes… there are so many people behind the scenes with their own stories to tell.  Perhaps you have noticed that this website is populated entirely by cartoon characters, being representatives from across the broad spectrum of the aviation industry.   A delightful part of the Junior Flyer journey for me has been the rediscovery of cartooning; you will notice as you progress through the site a variation in the quality of my meagre sketches, a skill that is itself evolving.  The visual method of communication fascinates me and, for better or worse, my cartoon characters will be telling their stories from across the industry.

A delightful byproduct of the visual style of Junior Flyer has been the writing of an illustrated fear of flying book.  It became obvious that much of the information I was presenting on this website was just the kind of thing that is taught in fear of flying courses.  Expanding on this base, with the assistance of a large quantity of sketch paper, pencils and a dragon called Felix, a book was born:  Dragons of Thin Air – A Most Unusual Fear of Flying Course is available from Amazon or from it’s own website www.dragonsofthinair.com .

Junior Flyer is still quite young, beginning in July 2009, and it has a long way to go in its evolution. It has had a stop-start life as I, like all of us, got diverted by other projects. I am hopeful, however, now that we have upgraded the site to a new WordPress format that we (my cartoon characters and I) will be able to keep it fresh, interesting and exciting.

Thankyou for your interest. I trust you will enjoy your flight with Junior Flyer.

Doug Worrall
Email: crew@juniorflyer.com