How did you become interested in Aviation?

Started flying control line at the age of 8, then RC after that, been hooked ever since
 
Last edited:
I was born and raised on air force bases. My father was a ball turret gunner in '17s and flew 36 missions over Germany. Later he did two tours of Vietnam. He was, and still is, my greatest hero, though he passed away a few years as ago.

All my early life I was around military aircraft. The people who flew the planes were not just heros, they were gods. They were special people, like my father. I really believed this idea.

There were normal people, like me, and then there were those that were so far above the rest of us that you could only look on in wonder. Normal people could not become pilots. Just like normal people could not do what my father did.

It never, ever, crossed my mind that i could become a pilot.

Then one day a girl friend who worked in the aviation business arranged a surprise for me. The surprise was a ride in a Stearman that turned into a pre- arranged dog fight with another aircraft.

It was the most exhilarating thing i had ever done. Afterward, the girl friend said, "Why don't you start taking flying lessons?". What? Me????

I did start flying lessons and managed to finish. When the FAA examiner handed me my temporary certificate I walked outside the FBO, sat down on the curb, and cried like a baby. Somehow, I had become one of those special people, at least to me.

To this day, I cannot watch the Thunderbirds or the Blue Angels without getting tears in my eyes. They are still gods to this old man.
 
My parents took a little 6 month old to one of the more epic airshows in San Marcos, TX that the CAF put on. I don't remember it, but we still have the program somewhere and I don't remember when I didn't want to fly a plane.
 
mighta started with ww2 series publications (from coles i think) that got into the spitfire, Messerschmidt history/rivalry, along with covering b17s, b24, mustang etc, all of them along with fab pix,

just lucky dad was a ww2 buff,

what then also totally blew me away was a first flight experience via vickers viscount
 
I got my first model plane for my 6th birthday. A Martin Seamaster jet seaplane. That started the ball rolling. By the time I graduated from high school you could barely see the ceiling of the basement for all the model planes hanging there. When our kids were in college time and money finally converged and I got my PP cert. First time behind the controls of a plane (on the ground!) is shown in the picture. :D That's an F-102 in 1960 at Travis AFB.431 Ghery Travis AFB Armed Forces Day May 1960.JPG
 
Small kid: I wanted to be an astronaut and fly the Space Shuttle. I learned all about Sally Ride, and had Shuttle posters on the wall.
There was no defining moment. It was always there. My parents'll say, oh yeah, we could tell real early. :)
I dressed up as Amelia Earhart for a kids' Halloween party once. (All the other girls came as princesses.)
 
Wrench978 said:
I wasn't interested in aviation until 2014. I was reading a novel in which a small plane crashed and a witness quipped "He wouldn't have crashed if he did a run up." I looked up what a run up was, and went down a google rabbit hole of aviation. at the same time, and without either of us knowing what the other was thinking, my in-laws stopped by the local airport and bought a gift certificate for me for Christmas.

Since then, I have gotten my PPL and got a job as an Air Traffic Controller (just started OJT in San Juan)
Click to expand...

CERAP or Tower?
 
I lived close to a airforce field (underneath "downwind") ... so had F-16's flying over a lot... Started off with gliders, didn't liked it as it was working all day for just a few minutes of airtime.. When I earned enough $$$ I went to powered flying.
 
"BOOM" Mom would say bad words, the windows would rattle, and I would do my best to get outside so I could see what it was. Hooked since I could walk on two feet.
 
Our house was on 3mi final for 28R at PIT. Loved looking at the fabulous mix of planes in use in the mid-late 60's. Still plenty of piston airliners as well as a wide variety of "new age" jetliners. It was a good time to be looking towards the sky!
 
Half Fast said:
Read a book when I was in first grade.

View attachment 67917

Didn’t get around to doing something about it for half a century, though.
Click to expand...

I had that book (and loved it) when I was a kid.

I was interested in flying from an early age, and wanted to be a fighter pilot, but my eyesight wasn't good enough. In fact, my eyesight concerned me enough to not even try until I was in my 40s. I built control line models (never quite got into radio control-money...). I started training in 2004, got my PP cert in 2006 and have about 275 hours today.
 
Wanted to fly as a kid, vision went south, dream died. Flew rc as a teenager. Couple decades ticked by, got back into rc, then my wife got me a discovery flight.
 
When I was 8, my mom gave me one of these for Christmas, and I was hooked:
upload_2018-10-8_9-35-51.png
 
Ryanb said:
So I know the stories for a few of you, but most I do not. I thought it might be a topic to learn more about each other.

What intrigued you to get involved with aviation? I think most of us have just had the flying bug since conception, but was there a distinct time in the past that you either took a ride with someone or visited an airport open house event, that sparked the desire?

I was one of those weird kids (still kind of am) who loved flying for as long as I can remember. I can’t quite pin-point an exact moment, it’s just always been there. Went to the annual open house events every year and took rides and that initially sparked a greater interest to take lessons when I turned 16. Soloed about a month and a half after beginning lessons and received my chic magnet certification at 17. I feel blessed and fortunate to have been and continue to pursue this passion since an early age.
Click to expand...

Killing time in Juneau, waiting for the ice to clear around my destination island, with a room-mate who was a private pilot. He took me down to the seaplane base at the small boat harbor and the rest is history.

Bob
 
I was just last night going through my original log book from '74 to '76 and entering the flights into Zululog.

Sadly, I cannot remember what prompted me to start flying. I mean my father worked as tool and die maker in aviation for decades and my older brother was a mechanic in the Air Force but I don't remember having a specific desire to fly. I think it was just seeing that the local college had an aviation program and thinking that would be neat. Glad I did it!
 
My uncle was a salesman for Monsanto Chemical Company and spent most of his time making sure the crop dusters had their product. When I was about four, I went with him out to the dirt airfield and waited in the truck as instructed. He came back and asked me if I wanted a ride on the Stearman crop duster. "Sure." I said. So I sat on the pilot's lap, no seatbelt, open cockpit and couldn't hear anything except the roar of that radial engine. We just went up, did one lap around the pattern and came back down and landed. I remember how smooth it was when the wheels lifted off that bumpy dirt runway.

I was hooked but I didn't start taking lessons until I was 24, in the Air Force and based at Kadena Air Base in Okinawa where they had an Aero Club. I soloed at 9 hours in a 152 and after 18 hours with 3 of them solo, I rotated back to the states having never taken a check ride. Life happened, marriage, twins, mortgage, etc. until one day four years ago when a guy who worked for me announced he was getting his CFI. I told him that if he did, I would be his first student. He did and I did but I didn't want to pay the school's rates for the lessons so I bought my own plane and learned in that.
 
A customer of mine called one afternoon and told me to stop by his shop because there was something I needed to see. He was a former airline exec, air taxi owner, and aircraft maintenance business owner and his crew had just finished a new conversion/cabin extension of a turbine beaver into a Magnum Beaver with all the bells and whistles. I sat in the pilot's seat in awe of the complexity and craftsmanship. Absolutely beautiful airplane inside and out. He suggested I step next door to a flight school and take a discovery flight. I did, and I was hooked. Bought a Hawk XP on floats and the real adventure began.
 
I was a transportation fan in all modes. Watched racecars on TV, I had posters of ships, trains, airplanes, and cars in my room growing up. Read books about it all (remember reading the Legal Eagle series plus tons of non-fiction bios of drivers etc..). Went to TransPo 74 (anybody go there?) and could have spent days there. A TransCaribean airline pilot (might have been American at that point) gave me my first small aircraft ride when I was probably 12 or 13. Always wanted to fly after that. Did ground school my senior year in college. Signed up for flight lessons as soon as I graduated.
 
Got a low draft number, talked to recruiter. They had this thing called aviation guarantee, 4 years and they’d give ya schooling in something aviation related. I figured that beat walking around with a gun stepping on punji sticks so I took the 4 years. Towards the end of boot camp they said go to sick bay. It was for a Class II medical. They made me a controller. Kinda got into airplanes and stuff through that.
 
My Father and his best friend were hardcore modelers and were flying RC in the early 60s. I grew up flying every type of aircraft model imaginable until RC technology and my age caught up with each other and I learned to fly. My brother and I were the first kids in a club of 150 modelers.

Then I was gifted flying lessons and logged 20 hours before college. The week after graduation I started glider lessons and finished up the SEL work and that was that.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk Pro
 
Well...I've always had a fascination for aerospace - really anything that flew. My dad got his Private up in Idaho when he was attending dental school, but stopped flying about the time I was born. My mom didn't particularly care for small airplanes either. Fast forward to my college years and I decided to pursue Mechanical Engineering (my original plan was Aerospace Engineering) in hopes of someday working in the aerospace industry. Wow...how things have changed for me ha. I decided to pursue my Private when I graduated college, really just thinking I'd do some "hobby" flying with my dad. As of now I am working on my Commercial and should have that done fairly shortly. I've really enjoyed flying - it's been exactly what I've been looking for - an adventure. It's been a heck of a journey and I have a long way to go, but I truly enjoy studying for new ratings, becoming a better pilot, etc.

Now a days I find myself sitting at my desk (at work) and day dreaming about flying. Or reading POA. Or Sky Vector. Or any other aviation related content on the interwebz.
 
Both of my parents worked for TWA. I spent my formative years flying around the country with their flight benefits. I remember going into the overhaul base in Kansas City at like 4 years old and standing under the nose of a 747. The rest is history as they say.
 
I had no interest in airplanes growing up, and the fact that I'm a pilot now is something of a miracle. I was interested in cars. We flew commercial and I remember the Pan Am shuttle. It was a way to get places, though. I never remember being particularly interested. September 11th, 2001 (senior year in high school), I watched my two favorite buildings get destroyed when airplanes flew into them and went to outright hating airplanes. I didn't get on a plane for 4 years after that, and really didn't want to. During college I went with a friend once or twice to the airport when they had to do something on their 182. Didn't fly in it, but saw the instruments and thought "There's no way I could figure this out, way too complicated."

Graduated from college and this company that took old tractor engines and threw them in the sky (Lycosaur) called me up and asked if I wanted to play around with engines. Yes, as a matter of fact, that's exactly what I wanted to do. They aren't car engines but this will do for now. A coworker took me for a flight in the club Archer. He was the sort who always wanted to make sure everyone else knew he could do stuff you couldn't, so he tried to convince me that I couldn't do it, and I thought "Not interested."

After that, logic took over and I realized that the highly subsidized flight club meant that I could never get my ratings cheaper, and even though I had no use for flying I might have a use for it someday. Might as well. A coworker (@Missa ) recommended an instructor, so I called him up. So I took my first lesson, and I did really have a good time. My instructor was a perfect fit for me all around. Fast forward 11 years, 3,000 hours, 7 ratings, and 4 airplanes later, I suppose you could say I've decided I like it. :)

Fearless Tower said:
Explaining how the sea called me, is the tough one knowing that I grew up in the desert and I haven’t found anyone in my family tree who went to sea in the last 200 years
Click to expand...

"All men are called to the sea, perilous though it may be." - Captain Barbossa :)

Half Fast said:
Read a book when I was in first grade.

View attachment 67917

Didn’t get around to doing something about it for half a century, though.
Click to expand...

We have that book and read it to our kids today.

Wrench978 said:
Since then, I have gotten my PPL and got a job as an Air Traffic Controller (just started OJT in San Juan)
Click to expand...

Were you on shift when I flew in and out this weekend? (N228WP, MU-2)
 
Ted DuPuis said:
Were you on shift when I flew in and out this weekend? (N228WP, MU-2)
Click to expand...

Nope... I was off. But that was me talking to you on Facebook. If you were on the ground longer, I would have bought you a coffee or something. Let me know next time you come down this way!
 
  • Like
Reactions: Ted
When I grew up as an Army brat, there was always something flying overhead, helicopters or even jets from a nearby AFB or NAS. I also grew up during the late Gemini days and through Apollo. Back then it was cool for kids to dream about becoming an astronaut. Later, in jr high, my AF pilot neighbor took me to his base and let me climb into his F15. Life was good. I have been hooked since as early as I can remember, but it took me many decades to make it happen.
 
Wrench978 said:
Nope... I was off. But that was me talking to you on Facebook. If you were on the ground longer, I would have bought you a coffee or something. Let me know next time you come down this way!
Click to expand...

Will do! Fortunately the weather cooperated for us.
 
Cub scout trip to the 121 airport. After they bored us with airport management ops potato (I still remember being bored out of my mind with that mockup of what was then the proposed new control tower), we walked outside the terminal and back to our car and I caught a glimpse of a pair of PRANGs A-7D SLUFs taking the runway for a form takeoff. I was around 9. That was the very moment. Everything changed for me. Though I never realized the dream of flying fighters for my hometown unit (they lost the fighter mission before I could finish college and apply), nor fly the SLUF or the Viper (my dream airplane), that sight has been the driving impetus for everything I've done ever since, to include the failures, mistakes, regrets, and victories in this journey, which has become an outright lifestyle.

upload_2018-10-9_18-8-13.png


fwiw, mine has been a somewhat narrow interest in aviation. It was always aerobatic flight, military fighters in particular. Heavy airplanes have never interested me, airliners bore me, and the BUFF almost made me quit flying. I'm much happier in the Talon. I will say, as a college student and young adult I grew to appreciate and garner a great deal of interest in piston aerobatic airplanes and GA cruisers. It was that re-exposure to piston GA (I had trained in part 61 before the military, so I was versed and exposed to GA already) that actually rekindled my love for aviation during my BUFF years.

The aerobatic ones were obvious to me, but the piston cruisers did so later in life mainly because I've found that side of aviation finally semi-attainable to me as an older adult with money. I never found it accessible before as a child of a place without organic cultural exposure to aviation (colonial political realities, which are for another thread), or a broke college student who felt private airplanes were a rich old man's hobby and I would never make enough to own one.

I have certainly grown to love and staunchly defend the freedom to fly unencumbered from the regulatory limitations of professional flying, relative to part 91 that is. I try to get anywhere and everywhere by the least amount of ATC interaction possible, and minimize IFR flying in my free time.

At any rate, that's my story. Life's too short to not roll upside down every now and then :D
upload_2018-10-9_18-25-46.png
 
My mother got me a flight during a local CAP penny-a-pound day when I was 7
 
First and only aviator in my family. Born with the bug. As far back as I can remember, I used to look at planes flying over our apartment in Newark, NJ enroute to EWR and TEB airports. It absolutely amazed me when I found out that there were men (and women but I didn't know about the women) in those machines flying up there with the birds!!! I remember one night as a young kid, I was looking at an airliner in awe that they were actually flying in the dark!
I asked my father..."how can they be flying in the dark?". In laymen's terms, he said..."they use instruments".

He knew I was destined to be a pilot, so he would grab me and my siblings, put us on the city bus (he couldn't drive and mom had no car) and take us down to EWR so that I could watch the planes landing and departing. This was the mid 70's, when you could sit at the gate all day whether you had an airline ticket or not. So we would sit and stand there for an hour or so with our faces plastered to the windows.

I later discovered flight simulators as a young teen but didn't get to take actual lessons and get my PPL until I was 32. As I write this, I'm actually getting a little emotional because he knew how much I wanted it, but didn't live to see me accomplish it. He used to say, "I wish I could afford to send you to flight school".

He passed away on Oct 1, 1991.
I started flight school in 1998 and my Checkride was scheduled for Oct 2, 1999. I felt his spirit with me that day, for sure!

No doubt dad would have been my first passenger.

Coincidently, my first job was at EWR and I took flight lessons and earned my PPL at TEB:)

Oh, almost forgot. The first pilot I ever met was an electrician at EWR when I was in the high school's work-study program, learning the electrical trade.
I was 17. When I told him how much I wanted to become a pilot, he said these words that stuck with me from that day on.
He said..."What are you doing about it?". That stuck with me and motivated me to start studying, even though I had no money for lessons yet.
 
Last edited:
This is a great thread, such interesting stories on how other got involved in aviation. My story is boring!

Although I've always loved flying I hadn't had the opportunity or money to get my ppl until later in life. We'd bought a cabin in northern MN, we live in SW MN, so it was about a 6 hr drive each way. One day, while my wife and I were on our walk, we were talking about buying a new diesel pickup to use as our vehicle for that trip, her SUV was getting a lot of miles on it going back and forth. Plus, it was getting tougher to get up there to take care of the place, 12hrs on the road to spend a Saturday mowing and maintaining was getting old. I said, well I could get my pilots license instead of a new truck? I looked into it, and started PPL training.

With work, life and chasing kids it too almost 1 year to go from student to PPL cert, but I did it. Now working on IFR cert, again life gets in the way but I'm plugging away on that.

What did take us 6hrs door to door, now takes us under 3. The flight is only 1.5. Plus we've been all over the lower 48 and even to the Bahamas!

I'm sooooo glad I didn't buy that truck!!!
 
Circa 1967. Of course, I can thank my old man who flew for the US Army. Below was his steed (Comanche 180) which took us often to the Bahamas, Sanibel Island and the frequent runs between Huntsville and Shreveport. Later years he had a Mooney Super 21, C-310 and a Yankee. He taught me to fly when I was 16 in that Yankee. We traveled in style and as you can see, he also taught me the importance of the Second Amendment lol...

BTW, he likes my Cherokee as the color schemes are very similar of the period with the old flying Piper indians

Good times



upload_2018-10-10_6-50-24.png
 
I was the kid who always had his hand out of the window in my mom's '67 Comet. Aerodynamics fascinated me. I would do 50g turns between stop lights:D:D:D while I was dog fighting the Germans...

Fast forward to 2006...I was doing great in business...told my former wife that I was going to buy a plane and learn how to fly...she said, well if that's the case..buy a John Deere...not a Murray.

The rest is history.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top