2003 has been and continues to be a busy year for Flashback Television. And no less so for its loyal and talented freelance team who make such a valuable contribution to the production of our programmes.

One of these is lighting cameraman Richard Terry. Over the past five months he has worked on a remarkably diverse range of assignments for our series Heavy Metal, Speed Machines, and Battlestations Iraq. In just a few months he has travelled from Cornish harbours to Welsh beaches, to six states across America, and through hostile environments in Kuwait and Iraq only days after cessation of hostilities in the recent conflict. And as part of this journey he travelled in a fighter jet at the speed of sound!

During a break in his hectic filming schedule Richard reflects on the roller coaster life of a Flashback cameraman:

I'm on a flight connecting between Atlanta and Detroit in the middle of a gruelling schedule jumping from one programme to the next - even sleep has to go on hold with the urgent need to wind down with a good night out at the end of a hard day's work.

The madness has reason! During the last few months I have literally travelled at the speed of sound from assignment to assignment. For the Heavy Metal series I filmed aboard a US Air Force F-15 Eagle fighter based at RAF Lakenheath in Suffolk as it went through its paces. It was a breath-taking experience.

I've also shot material for the Destroyer, F-18 Hornet, and B-17 Flying Fortress programmes in Washington, Baton Rouge, Pensacola, Dallas, Houston and Galveston. Phew! The series is all about what it's like to be inside these fighting machines, and I've certainly feel that I've had a taste of life on the front line. However on my next assignment I actually went there!

Sent in to record the experiences of veterans of the 2003 Iraq War, I travelled with assistant producer Nigel Morris. He'd been to Iraq before but this was my first trip to the region. We were due to fly into Baghdad from Kuwait City, but on arrival we were unable to get any military flights into Iraq. Working to a very tight schedule we had to come up with a solution and fast. Deciding upon a circuitous but hopefully guaranteed route we flew into Jordan, and then drove by overland convoy through the baking desert to Baghdad. Once there we interviewed American war veterans from operation Iraqi Freedom, filmed in an Abrams Tank and also in Apache & Black Hawk helicopters at Baghdad International airport. I managed to take home a suitable trophy of the trip; one of Saddam's cigars care of our Jordanian driver!

Back in the UK I got stuck in to shooting for Speed Machines, a series for Channel Four about the joy of speed and the competition to be the fastest. In June I went to sea aboard The Earl of Pembroke, a nineteenth century tall ship now based at the Square Sail Shipyard in St Austell, Cornwall. The setting was glorious. It's a picture postcard harbour and the sight of Earl of Pembroke in full sail takes your breath away. Shoot was fun but exhausting as I was climbing up rigging and around the bows all day long.

Only a few days later I was at Pendine Sands, an enormous stretch of sandy beach on the coast of South Wales. We were filming Babs, a 1920's land speed record-holding car. It was an eerie feeling to realise that the car bore the ghost of its creator, who was decapitated whilst pushing the envelope on the same beach over seventy five years ago!

But now I'm back in the States, looking forward to a much-needed day off in Detroit. In a day's time we'll shoot some more sequences for Speed Machines, this time for a programme about Fast Boats. Our location will be Lake Michigan and we'll film priceless antique speed boats running flat out on this huge inland sea.

But the adventure won't end there. When we wrap on the fast boat story I must be at the airport for a 4 am flight via Atlanta (with camera equipment that will require much sweet-talking to be let off expensive excess baggage!) to Fayetteville, North Carolina. This will be for Heavy Metal, and we'll be filming the A-10 Thunderbolt jet, the so-called Tank Buster. I'll be praying that adrenaline and large espressos get me through the day so I can deliver the photography that will best visualise the tale of this ferocious and unusual aircraft. I look forward to having a drink at the end of the shoot, raising a glass shouting the toast used by A-10 pilots, "Attack!"

The last few weeks have contained some of the most exciting and exhilarating experiences in my life. I am however longing to be sipping espresso with my wife in our new cafe, and swimming in our little Devonshire cove with Bella the dog, letting the cold seawater bring me back to reality.