Mike Ramsden

Known for his humility and wit, plus writing skills, Mike Ramsden, "JMR" to everyone, has passed away aged 90.

It was back in 1955 that he arrived at the then Flight magazine (still printed today as Flight International today and on-line as Flight Global) from an apprenticeship at de Havilland Hatfield. His stint on the world’s oldest aeronautical weekly was to span 34 years, from a time when – as he recalled in a 2009 article – there were 25 tortuous production processes from writer to reader.

He was to serve the publication in various capacities until 1989, when he joined the Royal Aeronautical Society completing last four years of his full-time career as editor of the monthly Aerospace.

His poetic way with words in capturing the poignancy of historic moments shone through. An editorial following the 1969 Apollo 11 moon landing showed his journalistic craft to perfection:

“The wings Man made in the morning of this century have flown faster and further than he could have dreamed. In this our journal’s 60th year, a man who had walked on the Moon was greeted back on Earth by another who had been the Wright Brothers’ mechanic. No handclasp in history more vividly measured Man’s progress or the nobility of his intellect and its mastery over matter.”

Our condolences to wife, self-dubbed “Angela Obvious”, noted in Flight's Straight & Level, son James, daughter Annabel and family.

The funeral will be on Tuesday 20 August at 12:30 at Harwood Park Crematorium, Watton Road, Datchworth, Stevenage, Herts SG2 8XT.

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