Richard Calder obituary

My father, Richard Calder, who has died aged 78, was an engineer who lived and worked all over the world and who had a special love for Brazil.

He was born in Surrey but brought up in New Zealand, where his father, Malcolm, was an air vice-marshal and later chief of the New Zealand Air Staff. With his mother, Peggy (nee Mandeno), and his sister Susan, the young Richard travelled around the UK, Malaya and South East Asia visiting his father, who was stationed in various parts of the world. At Wanganui Collegiate boarding school in New Zealand, Richard's passions were flying, fishing and aeroplanes, and he desperately wanted to join the air force. But bad eyesight precluded him from doing that, and instead he graduated with a degree in mechanical and aeronautical engineering from Canterbury University, New Zealand.