Steve Broadbent

About me....

I've had a long and varied career (that's a euphemism for unplanned!) and I have been told my talents are an unusual combination, an engineer who can write. Throughout the past 35 years 'communications' has been the constant theme.

My first job was the best in the world for an enthusiastic new graduate. After gaining an aeronautical engineering degree and completing my invaluable apprenticeship, I joined Flight Test at British Aircraft Corporation, Warton, Lancashire, then surely the best in the country, if not Europe. For four years I was part of the flight trials management team on the Jaguar Anglo-French military aircraft. This was a high-speed, high-energy role, working with colleagues of extraordinary calibre across the company. This is where my love of, and skills in, communicating were grounded.

Three jobs followed in quick succession - a technical editor on the world-renown Flight International weekly magazine taught me so much about writing fast and accurate copy, and then as liaison engineer on the ill-fated AEW Nimrod aircraft project and as a globe-trotting airliner salesman I again developed my communications skills.

A move into Press Relations in Manchester saw me heading the account for one of the UK's biggest defence electronics companies, Ferranti, in the early 1980s - again this was a high-speed, multi-faceted communications role, the link between the client and the press in an era of great competition between the world's many high-technology companies, and I gained experience of managing the team as well.

A short period of freelance writing led me to return to the fast-moving world of weekly journalism when I was appointed Jane's Defence Weekly's technology editor on the magazine's inception. As well as looking after high-tech matters for the weekly, I also edited Jane's Avionics yearbook.

A business and romantic partnership with JDW's designer, Viv Harper, saw us working together in business for over 15 years running our own publications companies. We exploited the then-new desk-top publishing technologies, and developed an amazing list of blue-chip clients and an incredible throughput of titles, mostly marketing newsletters for companies like Airbus, British Aerospace and Guardian Royal Exchange, to name but three. We also published manuals, books and, for four years around the year 2000, owned and managed our own full-scale glossy magazine, Airshow and Defence Expo International, devoted to the business of international aerospace and defence exhibitions.

In between all this, we essayed a lateral move, and strove to buy a public house....

Then, with the exhibitions magazine underway, I chose to explore an all-new line of work - railways. I had long been interested in the nation's rail network, and had been involved in the 1980s with steam railways and preservation, so I decided to meld this interest with my communications expertise an seek employ "on the railways". Early in 2008 I was lucky enough to secure freelance work on the fortnightly magazine 'RAIL', which fits the bill very well indeed!

All in all, a very varied and totally absorbing career, if somewhat unorthodox.