Today is May the 4th. Star Wars Day. The day I get reminded that I used to do something a bit ridiculous before I learned to fly something a bit ridiculous.
Before KK, there was R2-TK.
For seven years my weekends weren't about Class G airspace and PPR forms. They were about screen accuracy, white panels, and a small blue-and-silver droid I'd built in my garage. I was a member of the UK Garrison, the British branch of the 501st Legion. And I was part of R2 Builders UK, the people who make astromech droids in their spare bedrooms because that is apparently a thing that grown adults do.
Caz was in on it too. She trooped as a Jawa. Please don't ask. Just please, don't ask me how bad shopping gets when your wife is a Jawa.
What the 501st actually is
Some call it costuming, some call it cosplay. The technical term is trooping. Or, to put it mildly, dressing up as a plastic spaceman in a stifling hot uncomfortable costume you can barely see out of. Sounds like a PA28. Trust me, not much difference.
Then I grew up, a bit, and built a droid. Well, why not?
If you've never come across them, the 501st Legion is a global volunteer costuming group. Stormtroopers, Imperial officers, Sith, bounty hunters, the whole roll-call. The UK Garrison is the British branch, and there are over 400 of us across England and Wales. Worldwide, the Legion has 12,000+ members in more than 100 countries. The deal is simple. You build a screen-accurate costume, you turn up, and you spend your weekends being a friendly face inside a slightly menacing helmet.
It's a charity-driven outfit. Hospitals, hospices, military veterans, kids' wards. Hundreds of thousands of pounds raised every year. The dressing-up is the hook. The actual point is the fundraising and the kids. I've watched a child light up at the sight of an Imperial officer the same way I imagine they would at a real-life pilot. The costume is a permission slip for joy.
I built three costumes. A Stormtrooper first. Then a Biker Scout. And R2-TK. I trooped, and I was part of the command team for a stretch. So I wasn't just inside the helmet, I was helping co-ordinate where the helmets went. It was good work. Properly good. The kind of weekend that leaves you tired and pleased with what you have achieved.
Four days I won't forget
Trooping with the UK Garrison took me to a lot of places. Four stand out, for very different reasons.
The first was Great Ormond Street Hospital. If you've never been involved in a GOSH visit, the only thing I can tell you is that it changes the way you think about volunteering. You walk in expecting it to be hard. It is. You walk out wondering how the staff there do it every day, all year, without the costume to hide behind. That one stays with you.
The second was a private screening at the BFI on London's Southbank. ILM staff and their families. R2-TK was invited along. The moment that sticks with me wasn't the screening itself. It was a chap who came over to say hello. Turned out he'd spent three years 3D modelling an R2 unit for work, and this was the first time he'd seen one in the flesh. Three years of pixels meeting 462 days of aluminium and paint. He was delighted. I was, frankly, a bit lost for words.
The third was a Rogue One screening at Farnborough Airfield in August 2019. R2-TK rolling around inside the airfield's old hangar framework, with a full Rogue One lineup. Stormtrooper, Shoretrooper, Death Trooper, Vader, Jyn Erso, Leia, an X-Wing pilot. Caz was there too, crewing rather than in costume that day. The setting did most of the work. Those exposed steel arches against an evening sky, full troop assembled underneath, R2 in the middle of the line. One of those nights where you stop and think: how did I get here, and why am I dressed like this, and would I change anything? No.
The fourth was a PR shoot for Essex & Herts Air Ambulance at North Weald in April 2022. Their AW169 on the apron at last light, full troop in front of it. Stormtroopers, an X-Wing pilot, a Scout Trooper, Chewbacca, R2-TK in the middle. The pilot flying the aircraft that evening is a friend of mine, which made the night a bit special in a way I won't write about here. He knows. Standing on a HEMS pad at dusk with a screen-accurate astromech in front of a helicopter that genuinely saves lives is not a normal Tuesday. It's a long way from a hospital ward, and at the same time it isn't.
Four highlights. One because of who you help. One because of who walks up to you. One because of where you happened to be standing. One because of who was flying.
R2 Builders UK
The droid build is its own discipline. R2 Builders is a global group of obsessives who create screen-accurate astromechs from anything from machined aluminium parts to scrap from the kitchen, then painted to spec, with working domes and lights and sound. Some are radio-controlled. All of them take longer to build than you tell yourself they will when you start.
R2-TK is mine. He took 462 days to build. Slightly longer than waiting for a fuel stop at a busy field on a sunny Saturday, although it sometimes felt about the same.
The Elstree visit was during a charity open day. Many thanks to Elstree for letting us do that. They didn't have to. They could have looked at a man asking permission to take a four-foot droid onto an active airfield and quietly closed the door. They didn't.
R2 was, as I said in the Short, looking for a spare X-Wing. We didn't find one. He had to settle for a Cessna 172. A dream come true for a little astromech, all the same.
Why I stopped (mostly)
There was a stretch where the trooping and the flying were running in parallel. Saturday in costume at a hospital event. Sunday at Elstree with an instructor wondering why my radio calls had a slight Imperial cadence. Fun while it lasted, but something had to give.
Seven years was a good streak. Long enough to mean something, short enough not to outstay its welcome. I didn't fall out with the 501st or the R2 community. Both are still some of the best volunteer organisations I've come across. But Caz and I run a business together, and a business doesn't pause for charity events or build deadlines. The business comes first. Family flows from that. Then there's flying, which isn't a casual hobby. You know this if you're reading a UK GA blog. It eats weekends. It eats money. It eats the part of your brain that used to be reserved for other things. There wasn't room for everything.
Caz traded the Jawa robes for Disney vlogging. I traded the Stormtrooper helmet for a headset and a 1/5 of a Cessna 172. Different obsessions, similar brains.
So I stepped back. R2-TK still exists. The Stormtrooper and the Biker Scout are still in their boxes. I just don't get them out most weekends now. KK does.
The trade
Here's the thing nobody warned me about. The two hobbies are basically the same hobby.
R2 Builders rewards obsessive attention to detail. So does flying. Trooping rewards procedure, calm, and the ability to do the same thing the same way every time. So does flying. Charity events teach you to communicate clearly when you're hot and tired and your visibility is rubbish. Pretty handy, that one.
Same brain. Different uniform.
The difference is that one of them lets you go to Le Touquet for lunch.
These days I'd rather chase a £100 burger than a Death Star plan. Both involve a lot of preparation, an early start, and a moment where you wonder if you've thought it through properly. Only one of them gets you out of the country before lunchtime.
Why this post exists
This isn't a flying lesson. I'm not qualified to give one. It's a small bit of context for anyone who follows the channel and wonders where the brain space for self-deprecating videos and overthought landings comes from.
It came from seven years of building things that didn't have to fly, before I started learning to fly something that does.
The brand thesis I keep coming back to is this. We never stop learning, and the day we do is the day we should stop flying. I learned to build a droid. I learned to wear a Stormtrooper helmet without complaining. I learned to stand still while a child asked me very serious questions about the Empire.
Now I'm learning how to land a Cessna without bouncing.
Same brain. Different obsession.
May the 4th be with you.
