Bill Larnach's about me page

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This page gives a brief outline of my life so far.

I grew up in Marlborough, Wiltshire during the seventies. At sixteen I left School with three 'O' level's and a couple of CSE's, I joined the Army Apprentice College Harrogate and started training as a radio technician. Eventually I became bored of all the classroom work and transferred to the Parachute Regiment.

I passed out from the Parachute Regiment Depot in 1979 (18 recruits passed out from the 107 that had started six months earlier). When I joined my Battalion I was initially posted to a rifle platoon and then to the Signal platoon. I reached the rank of corporal and was a Regimental Signal Instructor.

I very much enjoyed my time in the Army and travelled around the world to various countries including Hong Kong, Italy, Canada, Denmark and Norway. I left the Army in 1985.

When I first left the Army I trained as a welder and had various engineering jobs at JanSpeed, Plenty engineering and Cementation piling. I was coded to ASME IX and BS 4872 in Gas, MIG, TIG and MMA welding.

I have always preferred motorbikes to cars and passed my bike test when I was seventeen and car test at twenty. In 1983 I owned a GPZ1100 - the fastest production bike of its day at 151mph - nothing like as fast as today's R1's or Hayabusta's but it felt fast at the time. My current bike is a Ducati 900 Superlight that I enjoy riding and maintaining in my spare time.

After several different welding jobs I went back to communications and settled down for a while as a British Telecom engineer. While working for BT I took evening classes in electronic servicing, and then moved on to work as an Instrumentation technician.

In 1990 I joined a local Company as a maintenance engineer, and in 1994 I joined my current employer as a senior technician.

I have many interests but the majority of my spare time is spent either on my computer studying with the Open University or taking part in my latest hobby of scuba diving.

Things I'm proud of:

• Gave up smoking (twice!) - the second time for good.

• Completed a University Degree as a mature student

• Completed a triathlon

• Completed several marathons

Things I want to do

• swim with great white sharks

• write something that's good enough to be published

• teach Computing / I.T

• try freediving

• try technical diving to 60m

• complete an Ironman triathlon (2.5 mile swim / 112 mile cycle / 26 mile run)

• Own a Subaru Impreza WRX STI

• Own a Smart car!

• Visit New Zealand