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Galtech Modles, Palmerston North
Being an air force engineer had been his dream job since he first flew a kitset remote control plane as a little boy.
But flight paths can change, and Rene Redmond's descended rapidly.
Occasionally, he still wonders what his life would have been like if the diving accident hadn't happened; if a broken neck hadn't left him in a wheel chair, his hands and legs paralysed.
But the Manawatū man never let it keep him down. He re-charted his life, starting two companies, designing and building drones that have flown everywhere from Antarctic ice-shelves to the battlefields of Afghanistan.
"Breaking my neck wasn't part of the plan, but it opened up an amazing 35-year experience and career. It's been a hell of a ride."
When Redmond left for a fishing trip in the Kaweka State Forest in Hawke's Bay with a couple of air force buddies in 1982, the then-25-year-old knew his life was about to change. It was only months before the birth of his daughter, Sarah Brooks.
What he didn't know was how far he would diverge from his former flightpath. The friends were swimming when Redmond dived into a river and hit a rock, breaking his neck, leaving him a tetraplegic.
Both his work and his hobby involved intricate skills. It would have been easy to let despair win.
But the need to find a replacement for his air force career, so he could provide for his newborn daughter, gave him focus and the determination to adapt.
Redmond still had his mind. His engineering expertise gave him a lifeline and an eight-year military career gave him the discipline to grab on and haul himself back up.
"I've never let [my disability] hold me back... No matter what kicks you in the arse in life, if you've got the right attitude, you can make it through."
The engineer leaned into the hobby that inspired him to join the air force, and started a model plane shop with his friend Lew Woods.
They were surprised by how successful Galtech Models became, as people sought the pair out for their knowledge of remote-control model plane-making. There was high demand for such niche expertise in the days before the internet provided a more instant resource.
The shop began to falter, so the friends switched their focus to their other business, eventually shuttering Galtech in the early 2000s.
Redmond and Woods had founded Skycam UAV in 1992, and helped pioneer the use of unmanned aerial vehicles for military, commercial and scientific purposes after getting a start in aerial photography.
One of Skycam's most successful fixed-wing drones was the Kāhu. It was named for a native bird of prey, and initially developed for the New Zealand Defence Force, which deployed it on aerial reconnaissance missions in Afghanistan.
Redmond and Woods also aided the development of an GPS-based autopilot system, which allowed a Kāhu operator to designate a flightpath and set the drone to patrol it autonomously with a range of 40 kilometres.
Skycam's work also drew the interest of a US Department of Defence contractor.
When Skycam became the first commercial manufacturer and operator to sell the technology, both in and outside of New Zealand in 2011, it was half the price of rival systems, with a five-year track record for reliability in harsh conditions.
But the majority of Skycam's work was providing UAVs for more peaceful missions, such as an Auckland of University-led programme to monitor the critically endangered Māui's dolphin population, or surveying the tops of 8000 foot-tall mountains in Borneo.
The company's SwampFox UAV was the first drone to reach into the remote dry valleys of Antarctica in a four-week research expedition led by Waikato University.
The expedition pushed the Swampfox's design limits, with temperatures dropping as low as minus 14 degrees Celsius, to gather data on the effects of climate-change on the isolated ecosystem of the valleys.
It's been a long and fulfilling engineering career for the now 63-year-old, and even as Redmond nears retirement age the plane-maker's not letting up.
He is still a Skycam director, the vice-president of Palmerston North Aeroneers model aircraft club, and also inspects and certifies model aircraft, drones and rockets for the Civil Aviation Authority.
"Honestly, I don't get a lot of time to get out and play in my man-cave, but I love it all."
Redmond's "man-cave" is a large corrugated-iron shed that looks like it would be right at home as a rural airfield hanger.
Instead, it rests at the end of a gravel driveway on a bucolic Bunnythorpe lifestyle block. A small herd of alpacas roams the front paddock, and a sign perched on an island of green in the eye of the loop driveway announces one's arrival at "The Castle".
Dozens of scale-model propeller bi-planes, gliders and jet fighters hang from the ceiling or are tucked away in every nook.
The work benches and tables are stacked with parts and tools, seemingly chaotically, but all are in easy reach from Redmond's wheelchair.
A fully functional Rolls-Royce jet engine sits by the doors on a combination display mount and work bench, right next to its miniature equivalent from one of the model planes.
Manufactured in 1973, it started life on the wing of a 14-seat commuter jet and was later used to soup up a two-seater plane for racing in Nevada. Wear and tear, and a massive crack in its casing, had taken the engine out of commission.
Redmond rescued it from the scrape-yard for a restoration project with his son-in-law Tarquin Brooks, a fellow engineer and ex-Skycam team member.
The two are close, and bond over their shared love of planes and machinery. Brooks is Redmond's right-hand man when he's tinkering away on a new model plane or some other project.
Redmond says he provides the knowledge and experience, while Brooks provides the fine-control and precision his own hands are no longer capable off.
The engineer still gets hands-on as much as he can, and loves working the lathes.
"[Those] machines become an extension of my hands. I can turn the wheels, and make the judgements, and the machine handles the precision."
After two years of painstaking work, Redmond proudly demonstrated the restored jet-engine in public for the first time at the Wings over Wairarapa airshow in February.
It was a real crowd-puller, especially when the engine was running with a full-throated roar, generating 1700kg of thrust, a symbol of propulsion – much like Redmond himself.