Born in ‘63, raised and living in The Netherlands ever since. Presently living with his dear wife Nicole near the airport of Eelde where he has his workshop.
Since early age I started working on all kind of DIY projects like for example polyester fiber surfboards. At the age of 18 and finally legally allowed to ride motorcycles, I owned two standard Suzuki GS bikes. Then my dream came into reality when, from my first 2 years salary, my first Harley-Davidson FXEF 1200 was bought. That bike was a willing victim to all kinds of good and bad changes on the interior as well as the exterior.
Educated at the Maritime Academy Holland, obtained an officers maritime engineering degree and worked several years in the shipping engineering industry. Several years later made a complete new career switch as an aviation pilot instructor and later became an air transport pilot on the B747-400. Works presently in the aviation industry for a major international airline as a pilot flying both the Boeing B777 and B787 dreamliner. In between work & travelling, working on the StrikerX projects.
After a period of 12 years, while making career, restoring the house and other silly things, in the early 00’s I went back into motorcycle things and became a hobbyist motorcycle racer. Soon after started competing in Ducati related racing competitons in the Netherlands beginning with a standard classic 1992 Ducati 888 which ended up as being not so standard and very fast!
“I’ve always had the urged of creating things even as a kid, I remember I once made an plastic model spitfire taxi with its tine propellor with the use of Lego train electric motor, no need to say the Lego train was wasted in the process….
Making things with my own hands and mind, solving problems how things need to be fixed and using them afterwards has always given me a great feeling of pleasure and fullfilment. I guess it’s not only just the end product as well as the whole process of figuring things out that gives me the most pleasure…..
“Creations can be anything like making motorcycles, a website, flying model airplanes (P51), installing solarpanels, learning to play the drums, learning italian, rebuild my car fuel system into a fully working vegetable oil system(!) etc. I don’t think I ever get bored a moment in my life. Despite the fact I’ve never considered myself a real technician it turned out that everything I practically do is technical. “
During the periode of racing did most of his own maintenance and documented all these maintenance successes and failures on the website www.HqRacing.nl. The idea behind that site was to create a site from scratch in the first place and that had something usefull to tell the reader.
Furthermore, show others what to and what not to do while working on motorcycles. It was purely intended to get others to fiddle around with the broad spectrum of motorcycle techniques without making too many of my mistakes. And take away a bit of the mystery of the ducati engine design. These engine blocks are fairly easy to maintain by one self if you know how.
First major succesfull bike project was the ‘Ducati TriNoveRoche’, which was a Ducati 888 look-a-like with a high performance 999 race engine installed and in-house made custom carbon parts. I think that project can now be seen as the major testcase for the later StrikerX project. Finally I sold both the 888 and 999TNR together to an english collector which gave me the money to buy an almost brand new Ducati 1199.
The 1199 was again transformed into an active race bike being a fully tuned 198 BHP Panigale ABS and nicknamed the Ducati ‘Panidici’ because of the custom made fairing which was a mix of the panigale fairing with a desmosedici nose fairing. I always loved the look of the desmosedici anyway.
Presently the StrikerX has become an extensive project where a complete new Cafe Racer is build around an old ducati 900SS ie engine. Lots of new techniques are involved in the building process e.g. Chromemolybdeen frame building, manufacturing vacuum pre-preg carbon parts and anodizing home made aluminum bike parts. As all these techniques take some time to master and require additional equipement like a vacuum oven etc. the building process has (unfortunately) been much longer than any other previous project. But the first StrikerX was launched July 2019.
Needless to say I got so much inspiration from the first project bike that the second StrikerX is now also in the making. That bike will be a much more esthetic race version of the first StrikerX because of the many high tech race parts I have lying around of the 1199. The target is to build an extremely light bike with e.g. carbon BST rims, standard carbon StrikerX seat, tank and fairing and an S2R swingarm and a carbon subframe. The engine will be something like a big bore 1180cc DS aircooled twin Ducati or what ever comes by….no lack of ideas….
One thing that I really would like is to meet the man behind the WSM Leggera in the USA. He was for me the inspirator to continue the work on this bike. Well who knows some day….
