A review of any engineers personal hobbies                sheds light onto the depth                          of their involvement                                    with the world of technology.
	Spend a few moments to review the extent to which technology has impacted Ian Ayton’s personal lifestyle where “Making Things” has been a consistent theme. In his personal life, this has revealed itself in literally hundreds of things created to enhance his own lifestyle. Examples range from a prize winning oak bureau he made at age 15 to an award winning scratch built high performance aircraft completed in 1986. The bureau still adorns his living room and his airplane has transported him at 200 miles per hour for over 300,000 miles. He has restored eight cars and four motorcycles. The technical skills he has mastered to create these personal items have strengthened his abilities to perform successfully as a professional mechanical engineer. In the real world of new product development, an engineer spends a large portion of his time fixing things because any design solution rarely works perfectly first time its tried. An engineers “fix it” skills become second only to their ability to visualize the problem solution. Fixing an old Jaguar, a washing machine or a high performance aircraft starts by understanding the principle technologies that makes these things work.  Therefore, when seeking help from a product development engineer, investigate their track record when it comes to fixing things, not just in their professional world but in their personal lives as well.