How old were you when you pursued the dream?

How old were you when you pursued the dream to fly?

  • 14 to 16

    Votes: 38 16.2%

  • 17-20

    Votes: 23 9.8%

  • 20-25

    Votes: 30 12.8%

  • 26-29

    Votes: 28 11.9%

  • 30-35

    Votes: 27 11.5%

  • 36-39

    Votes: 20 8.5%

  • 40-45

    Votes: 32 13.6%

  • 46-49

    Votes: 15 6.4%

  • 50+

    Votes: 22 9.4%
  • Total voters
    235
AdamZ

AdamZ

Touchdown! Greaser!
Joined
Feb 24, 2005
Messages
14,866
Location
Montgomery County PA
Display Name
Display name:
Adam Zucker
How old were you when you first decided to pursure your dream of flynig? I mean not just said one day I'm gonna learn to fly but took a proactive step to starting lessons.
 
33 for me. I wanted to pay as I went along and not acquire a lot of debt.
 
My earliest memories are of wanting to fly, watching the Navy planes fly across our home on the way to Corpus Christi NAS. That was during WW II and there was a lot of activity. After I learned to write in the first grade, we had to write a paper telling what we wanted to be when we grew up. My answer was "fighter pilot". As it turned out, my father forbade me to fly as long as I lived in his house. So, at 18 I joined the AF, went through OCS, then into AVCads. Never once regretted my choice.
 
In 1965, when I was a kid, my neighbor had an old champ that he would fly out of his pasture. I would ride my bike over to his place and mooch rides all of the time. He was also a CFI, so one day when I showed up he had a log book and started logging the time for me. I was his only student at that time and I think that he was keeping his CFI current by logging my rides as dual. I guess that I don't really know how that works, but I got that impression. He ended up selling his farm and moving, and I went over to a neighboring airport to finish up.
 
43, the first wife would not allow me to set foot in a small plane, thank goodness she's gone.
 
Got the bug in college. Graduated, got married, went broke, saved money and finally earned my ticket at 34.
 
Can't answer the poll. It doesn't go below 14.

I grew up in a flying family and I knew I needed to learn to fly since before I can remember. By the time I was about 11, I had already gone through the private pilot manual and I could have likely taken the written. I'd have probably done a reasonably respectable job on most of it. I distinctly recall having to wait a really long time to take the written so I could get into the 24 month window. I put a lot of right seat hours in with family very early on. I was already very competent on what I was doing on instruments and out the side window because I couldn't see over the Cherokee's panel. (The 3 hours of instrument training was a ho-hum-this-again-why-not-give-me-a-challenge event) Everyone was very supportive and taught me things every time I asked or went up even long before I could start lessons.

Very determined steps toward training and a license probably started around 9 years old. Long before that it was something that I knew without a question that I was going to do when I was old enough to see over the panel.

Mom and dad have a picture of me being held up in diapers at the controls and said I wanted to learn to fly then. I wouldn't keep my hands off things while looking out the window trying to fly the plane. If that counts as proactive, your poll needs to go to zero years old. The interesting thing is that I still remember that flight and how the controls in my hands would make the plane sit up or tump over if I moved them in certain directions. I knew to look under the wing, all I had to do is keep turning the steering wheel thingie but for some reason dad decided he didn't want to do that too much.
 
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I'm told my first ride in an airplane was when I was three years old. I barely have a flash of a memory of that ride, at the airport my step-grandfather built as part of a residential airpark. (Originally Sky Lakes, it still lives on as Skydive Houston, 37X.)

I kinda sorta wanted to fly as I got older, but I put it on hold. I only started when a job change left me with enough funds to ensure I'd be able to finish. That was when I was 28. I flew for 5 years, falling off as money got tight, and eventually got away from it.

I got back into it when my current job got me into a position where I could afford to buy the airplane I'd wanted for 20 years, ever since getting the ticket, and the sport pilot rule removed the medical roadblock that had cropped up in the time since I'd gotten away from it. I'm happy I did.
 
jmaynard said:
at the airport my step-grandfather built as part of a residential airpark. (Originally Sky Lakes, it still lives on as Skydive Houston, 37X.)
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The wife and I were out toodling around about 3 weeks ago and dropped in to your Skydive. Had to time it, since a twin Otter was taking skydivers up. Still a nice area with lots of good folks. :cheerswine:
 
55, and I wish I had done it 35 years before when I could have done it for practically nothing. My wife started a couple of months later, same age.

Gee, we're a couple of the old ones so far!
 
I grew up 1 mile west of runway 9/27 at the Glenview (IL) NAS, seeing weekend warriors in A4s, P-3s, and C-130s. I saw the Blue Angels fly their F-4 Phantoms there. Our house shook a lot, but I loved every minute of it.

Tried to get into the USAF in 1982, but at my physical at Offutt AFB I was 1/4" too tall torso height - damn T-38 limitation.

Took a couple of lessons out of college, but the CPA exam got in the way. Got married, and ran out of money and time.

At 44 my life consisted of family and work - and that was it. I always planned on getting back into flying when my daughter was done with college, but we accelerated that plan by about 6 years - which I think (figuratively) saved my life. Got my license at 45, and am now 6 weeks into my IR training at 48.
 
I took my first flight at CAP cadet summer camp. I still remember it very well. It was in a yellow and white Cessna 172 with ARC radios in the instrument stack.

Later I got to get a flight in a 1940's Taylkor craft and almsot got to go gliding.

It was not until a the middle of college I was able to take some real lessons and I was able to solo. I was just starting to get ready for doing my XCs when the money ran out.

My next flight had to wait almost 20 years. Even then I was still dreaming about it and was considering just buying a motorcycle. But my SO talked me into the "safer" thing and I started flying again. I got my license and was renting away quite happily.

Then 9/11 happened and I was grounded for an even longer time than most thanks to 'Enhanced class bravo" so I started my instrument rating and that got me doing a lot of XC flying to do places. By then I was out growing the whole rental world and got the go ahead to buy a plane. Picked up a commercial rating along the way and have been having a great time ever since.
 
took my first lesson on 11/07/1998 at the age of 43, after getting involved with our Special Needs Fly-in at CXY, and being pestard to get my ticket. Before that i wanted nothing to do with flying Took my checkride on 04/19/2000 (OK i'm a slow learner and Wx didn't help)

Dave G:blueplane:
 
19... I found out early that life is short, eat dessert first. :yes:
 
I was sixteen on my discovery flight for ten bucks but the money was never there to take lessons. I could have made enough over a couple summers to have easily paid for a ticket but didn't realize it at the time. When I finally began lessons, I was twenty after getting assigned to NAS Cecil Field. I joined the flying club over at Navy Jax. After flying about six years and accumulating just under two-hundred hours, I lost my ticket then didn't fly for nineteen years. It seems much longer.

In 2005, I finally returned to the sky and took it several steps further. Now, I teach others how to get high and couldn't be happier.
 
7 or so on my first ride, with my uncle in his cherokee

17 for my first lesson. now i give my uncle flight reviews in his cherokee.
 
I was 32 when I took my first "real" lesson... very surprised to see that so far with this poll, 30-35 is the largest group. I felt like quite the misfit back then; there was maybe one other pilot in my ground school class over 30.
 
Today is August 11th, 2008. If you had told me on August 11th, 2007 that today I would have gone from having 0 hours logged to having close to 150 hours logged and be an instrument rated pilot, I would have laughed at you. My first lesson was September 9th, probably a week or two after I got a ride with Missa and she made it fun. That started me on this very pleasant mental disease that is a love of aviation and talking about airplanes. :)

By the way, I was 23 then, and 24 now. Part of why I'm trying to go through and get my ratings and all now is because I don't have to answer to anybody but me. :)
 
I guess we can say 40, although it was right on the cusp of 41...

I'd knocked the idea around off and on for several years but finally made the inquiries during June. Had one of the intro flights the week prior to the 41st and actually got started three days after turning 41.

Seven weeks in, the solo is out of the way.
 
38. My wife got tired of hearing how I've wanted to fly since watching Sky King as a kid (and realized that flying like Superman was a bit out of the question). She bought me a logbook, the Airplane Flying Handbook, and a set of 3 lessons so I could finally get it out of my system. :)
 
I'm a late starter, I guess :). I was 60 when I got my ticket. As others have indicated, I wish I had done it a long time ago. But it required money and time, neither of which I had until the last few years. And with fuel prices going up along with associated rental rates, I'm not sure how much longer the money will last :(.

Best.
 
52. Two kids, mortgage, two college educations, only God knows how many cars to maintain etc. etc. :dunno:

Purchased first and only plane two years later. :blueplane:
 
Well for me I was bit by the bug when I was somewhere between infancy and toddlerhood. My folks took me to my first movie "The Blue Max" I don't remember anything about it but my folks say I was mezmerized by the planes. Then as a toddler and up through age 5 they would take me to the observation deck at the old Terminal at PHL. Then my dad was an Doc in the USAF and we lived in base housing at Langley AFB. I recall going to visit him at the Base Hospital I can still recall the F-104s roraing past. I have always had my eyes to the sky.

As an Adult when ever we'd fly commercial my wife ( and even before we were married) would get exasperated when we were at the airport I'd have to check out every plane and get a seat in the terminal that affored me a view of the approach end of the runway.

Finally at around age 38 my Wife insisted I go take lessons. She said it was probably safer with me actually flying than me driving past the airport with my head crained so I could see the planes flying and not looking at the road. I had alwasy been very concerned about the cost but at the time my Father in Law was dying and that had a big impact on me. I didn't want to be on my death bed saying " I WISH I HAD..."

So I signed up got my PP then my IR.
 
I remember that movie!! Good flick.

From when I was a little kid my dad used to take me to airports to look at planes. I remember going into the terminal and just walking on if the plane was parked there. We even got a look in a few cockpits without the pilots around. THOSE DAYS HAVE CHANGED!

Dad's childhood friend became a pilot in WW2, dad washed out of flight school but never lost the love of flight. He would have loved seeing me with an airplane and a pilot's LICENSE (for Ed).
 
AdamZ said:
My folks took me to my first movie "The Blue Max" I don't remember anything about it but my folks say I was mezmerized by the planes.
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Interesting. My dad took me to see "The Blue Max" when I was a kid (probably around 10) and it became one of my favorite movies even though I was quite a bit older before I understood the whole story. It never really occurred to me to learn how to fly when I was a kid, though. I was late high school age before I thought it was even a possibility.

I'm surprised at how evenly distributed the ages are. I expected a group of people who started young and then another group of people 35-45, the "mid-life crisis" group. :dunno:
 
AdamZ said:
Finally at around age 38 my Wife insisted I go take lessons. She said it was probably safer with me actually flying than me driving past the airport with my head crained so I could see the planes flying and not looking at the road.
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How's that working for you now? Getting that ticket sure makes you focus more on the road when driving past an airport, doesn't it? :no::no::no::D:D:D
 
Everskyward said:
I'm surprised at how evenly distributed the ages are. I expected a group of people who started young and then another group of people 35-45, the "mid-life crisis" group. :dunno:
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I think that is jsut the way the data is parsed, the 5 year data groups are far too granular. Better to look at it in 10 year blocks.

Then you will see up to 20 -22%
20 to 30 - 31%
30 to 40 - 22%
40+ - 35%


That shows more the young single getting into flying, then having to back off to raise a family and getting back into it when the kids are more grown up and their salaries can afford some extra fun.
 
My father would take me flying from the time I was 3 years old. When I was in college, I read Richard Bach's "A GIFT OF WINGS". One of the stories in the book was about when to take flying lessons. The line in the story was, "if you have the time and the money, do it!" I did, so I did. As soon as I had the minimimums required for the instrument rating, I did that, too.
 
AS with most, I had the bug from virtually the day I was born. Pictures of planes, models of planes, the works. Actually flying, that was a bit beyond our financial means growing up. The dream went dormant until 3 yrs ago, at the ripe age of 39. Something just got me to thinking, I started subscribing to flying mags, joined AOPA, reached a critical mass of obsession, nagged my wife until she relented into permitting a discovery flight, and I haven't looked back since.:cheerswine:
 
Gosh i was maybe 4 when dad put us all on a Eastern DC-3 for our first trip. I did not want the flight to end. Also when I was 5 my uncle who flew in WWII took me for a ride in an Aeronca Chief he barrowed from a fellow pilot. Then I was hooked and started building models both static and flying rubber band ones. Even made my own flying models from scrap balsa wood and lots of rubber bands. Then became an airport kid to pay for flying lessons.

John J
 
Either 24 or 25, depending on what you consider the start, but I'd wanted to learn to fly since I was a lot younger. As a birthday present last year, my fiancee got me a gift certificate for a discovery flight, which I finally took advantage of a few months later (a year ago today, coincidentally). I'd flown a few times before when I was younger (right seat in a C172 at an aviation summer camp once, and in someone's homebuilt at an EAA thing) so I was pretty darn sure I was going to like it. I decided I was going to wait and get some money saved up before I started anything, so it wasn't until this March that I finally started looking into schools in great detail, and not until May that I started lessons. Since then I've flown at least once a week (with one exception where I had to cancel because of weather) and I got the OK from the fiancee to go to twice a week (Sat. and Sun.) and I'm taking full advantage ;)
 
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