David Garrood

RC Racer • Air Racing Enthusiast • SRE • Photographer • Sim Pilot • Transport Fever Tinkerer

I build, race, fly, tune, fix, optimise, and occasionally crash things — both in the real world and the virtual one. This site is my hangar, pit lane, and workshop all in one place.

Start with my story

My Story

I’ve always been drawn to things that move — cars, planes, systems, ideas. As a kid, it started with simple RC cars and the thrill of making something go faster. Over time, that curiosity evolved into a deeper fascination with how things work: suspension geometry, control inputs, feedback loops, and the quiet satisfaction of getting something to feel “just right”.

That same mindset followed me into my professional life. I found my way into Site Reliability Engineering, where the stakes are higher but the principles are familiar: build systems that behave predictably, stay calm under pressure, and keep iterating until they’re solid.

Along the way, I picked up photography, flight simming, and, more recently, a slightly obsessive interest in Transport Fever 2. They might look like separate hobbies from the outside, but to me they’re all part of the same story: a love of motion, detail, and the craft of making complex things feel effortless.

Timeline

Early RC & First Cars

It started with basic RC cars and car park racing — nothing fancy, just the realisation that I wanted more control, more speed, and more understanding of what was happening under the shell.

Club Racing & Setup Obsession

Joining club racing opened up a new world: proper tracks, proper competition, and the rabbit hole of setup. Ride height, camber, droop, oils — the more I learned, the more I wanted to refine.

Air Racing & Flight Simming

Aviation and air racing added a new dimension: speed in three axes, energy management, and the discipline of flying clean lines.

Site Reliability Engineering

Professionally, I gravitated toward reliability and calm problem‑solving. SRE gave me a place to apply the same iterative, engineering mindset to large‑scale systems.

RC Racing

RC racing has been with me for most of my life. I started like many people do — a cheap car, a car park, and the realisation that I wanted something faster, sharper, and more technical.

I’ve raced everything from vintage classics to modern Xray machines, and I’ve learned that the magic isn’t just in the speed — it’s in the process.

Links

My RC story began when I was nine years old, with a Tamiya Hornet I bought myself. My brother still has it today. After the usual laps around the garden and the street outside, something in me wanted more. A family friend offered to take me to Adur Model Car Club, the same club that still exists now. The Hornet was out of its depth, and so was I, but something lit up inside me on those first runs. I knew I wanted to go further.

The Kyosho Optima Pro came next. Faster, sharper, but still nowhere near the pace of the front runners. I saved everything I could and eventually bought a Schumacher CAT XLS, upgraded all the electrics, and for the first time I had a car that could truly compete. And compete it did. I climbed the ranks, and I loved every second of it.

With family support across birthdays and Christmases, I built a top‑level setup. The results came, and I started to win, first at club level, then at regionals, nationals, exhibitions, everywhere. At some point, without me really noticing, the family friend who took me to my first race had become my manager, pit boss, mechanic, and chauffeur. I had sponsors, supporters, team‑mates.

It became a cycle: school during the day, working on the cars every night, racing every weekend across the south of the UK. On‑road, off‑road, regionals, nationals. Wear this hat, that shirt, put these stickers on, take those stickers off. It was a whirlwind for someone so young.

I remember my last race clearly. Eastbourne, 1991. A driver I had looked up to for years — my mentor, my benchmark, called out on lap one, “Who just went past me?” Then again on lap seven, “David, was that you that went past again?” In that moment I realised I had surpassed the goals I’d been chasing for five years straight.

I finished the race, handed my car to the pit man who had been with me from the start, and said, “Put it away. I am done.” He didn’t question it. And that was the last race we ever went to.

Thirty‑five years passed. My wife asked if I was ever going to do anything with the old cars sitting in the garage. I didn’t know, so I went online to see if they were worth anything. I had no idea vintage racing was a thing or that Adur was still running.

I visited the off‑road track, now in a new location. To my surprise, an old face from back in the day had also decided to visit that same afternoon. He wanted to return to racing. Many more have reappeared since, which still feels surreal.

Shortly before my first race in thirty‑five years, the man who had driven me to my first race, my manager, pit boss, mechanic, chauffeur, and constant presence passed away. I never got to tell him I was returning. I never got to share the old faces still around, the ones he knew. That loss sits quietly in the background of my return, a reminder of how much he shaped those early years.

A year later, I’m back racing with old friends, old cars, and new ones too. I love it just as much as I remember — but without the pressure, without the need to win, without the weight of expectation. I race for fun now. I race to get away from the computer. I race because I can.

And I help run the club that built me, giving something back and helping new racers create the kind of memories I’ve carried for decades.

My RC story isn’t finished. It’s simply picked up again, right where it left off, but this time it's the same only different.

Air Racing & Flight Simming

Aviation grabbed me early — the speed, the precision, the discipline of flying clean lines. It’s a world that rewards focus, and from the first moment I saw a cockpit glow in the dark, I knew I wanted to be part of it.

I was born in Canada, and aviation was part of my life from the start. We travelled to England several times a year, and on those long overnight flights I was already wandering away from my seat, ending up in the galley with the flight attendants.

One night, I wandered even further, straight into the cockpit. The glow of the instruments, the quiet hum of the engines, the black ocean below and stars brighter than anything I’d ever seen… I stood there in absolute awe. I sat in the jump seat and fell into the calmest sleep of my life. That’s where my mum found me.

When we moved to England at six, being a pilot became the only dream that mattered. But at eight years old, during a routine school medical, two nurses told me I was colour blind and would “never be allowed to fly anything.” Their words hit with such finality that I simply shut down. School felt pointless. The dream was gone.

Years later, at seventeen, I applied for an apprenticeship at Gatwick Airport. Another medical. When the colour test appeared, I told the doctor I couldn’t pass it. He said there were other tests and I passed every one. “These are the same tests pilots take,” he said. “If this had been a pilot’s medical, you would have been given a pass.”

My way back into aviation came through simulation. At my dad’s house I tried Microsoft Flight Simulator 95, and it opened a door I thought was closed forever.

When FS98 arrived, I began developing aircraft. I met incredibly talented people, learned to fly properly, and started creating models that pushed the limits of what freewware could be. Our work in the Allied FS Group gained global attention and even media coverage.

Over the years I contributed to major projects, helping shape FS2000 and beyond. X‑Plane became part of my toolkit too. It was an incredible period — technical, creative, and deeply fulfilling.

Then came a chance conversation at work with a former leader of the Red Arrows and pilot in the Red Bull Air Race. He asked me to join the team. We built aircraft and systems directly from the real race plane, created scenery for every track, and moved into VR to help train Ben before each race.

The progress was remarkable, and much of the team’s improvement was credited to my work even if I never quite felt it was mine. We began developing the same systems for Flight Simulator 2020, but shortly after the aircraft was ready, the race series was cancelled and the team disbanded.

Today I still fly, mostly the Airbus A320, by the book, with precision and discipline. It’s enjoyable, but it doesn’t carry the same spark it once did.
Maybe because I know how close I came to the real thing. Maybe because part of me still lives in that cockpit I wandered into as a child, staring out over the blackest sea and the brightest stars I’ve ever known.

Site Reliability Engineering

My path into Site Reliability Engineering didn’t follow the usual route. I didn’t come through a computer science degree or a traditional ops ladder — I came through curiosity, mischief, engineering instinct, and decades of solving real problems long before anyone called it SRE.

Automation

Observability

Incident Response

Team Leadership

My journey into SRE started long before I knew what the role even was. At secondary school I was given an F in IT, not because I couldn’t do it, but because I could. I hacked the Amstrad PCWs to scroll a message across every machine saying IT sucked, and locked the teacher out of the keyboard so it couldn’t be fixed. That was my first taste of systems thinking: understanding how something worked well enough to break it creatively. I went on to study electronic engineering in college, but my first job was assembling lawn mowers. On day release I studied horticultural engineering, and even there I found myself drawn to the systems behind the machines. I watched the company’s IT provider struggle with problems I knew I could solve. Eventually I was asked to support the company’s IT myself, then to manage all of it: the website, CRM, accounting software, security, everything.

That role opened the door to an MSP job, which in turn led to my introduction to the Air Race team and a network of aviation contacts. It was a strange mix of engineering, troubleshooting, and high‑pressure reliability work long before I knew the term SRE existed.

When I later applied for a desktop support role, the interview took a turn. We started talking about my flight sim development, the Air Race team, and the systems I’d built. One of the managers interviewing me, someone with incredible intuition saw something in me I hadn’t seen in myself. Instead of the desktop role, he offered me a position in his new SRE team, alongside engineers who had been doing the job for years.

I joined as an equal and I delivered as an equal. Only one person knew the role I had originally applied for. That was the moment I realised I belonged, that I was good enough. It was personal validation I’d been searching for without even knowing it.

Years later, when the team was shut down, I found myself looking for new roles and wondering again if I was good enough. The offers came quickly, from across the industry. It was surreal and humbling.

I eventually joined a new team where reliability wasn’t about protecting money, but protecting lives. Working in healthcare changed everything. It sharpened my focus, deepened my sense of responsibility, and made me want to teach those following behind me.

Today, I still feel that drive, to be better, to help others be better, and to honour the strange, winding path that brought me here. My SRE story is still being written, and I know there are many chapters left.

Photography

Photography is my way of slowing down. Whether I’m at a track, an airfield, or just out for a walk, I’m always looking for moments that feel alive.

Transport Fever 2

My newest obsession. What started as a casual game turned into a full‑blown interest in tuning vehicles, balancing performance, and modding for realism.