Flight Influences From Childhood

Clayviation

Clayviation

Filing Flight Plan
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Apr 23, 2016
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Clayviation
Hi everyone! I'm a Private Pilot with a six year old son who's picking up on a lot of aviation. I'm curious how many of my fellow pilots have started flying because of flying experiences as a child. Did your parents fly? Were you taken to the airport? I'd love to hear what caused you to get the aviation bug if it was from your childhood. Here are my two contacts with flying: My uncle, who is not a pilot, took me out to Gwinnett County (KLZU) as a kid - I think just once - to "watch the Cessnas." I'm still not sure why, given his non-pilot status. I'll have to ask him. The other is when a good family friend had Chuck Yeager's Flight Simulator from the early 90s and a joystick. I saw him play it a couple times and thought it was cool as a young child. As a college student, I thought back on those experiences and bought Microsoft Flight Simulator and a joystick. That led to having my lunch break at Peachtree Dekalb Airport (KPDK), and I'm sure you know how the addiction progresses after that...
 
Air Force "brat", grew up on AF bases. My uncle was an USAF pilot, flew 'over the hump' I guess in either C-46s or C-47s.
 
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I was always a transportation junky, Planes, Trains, Ships, Cars. I had posters in my room and read just about any book I could find in the library (adult section included). My father was involved in airline labor and regulation legal work and I got a lot of "scrap paper" the was old legal briefs (they only print on one side) with lots of stuff on airliners. One of his clients, then a Flight Engineer on a 727 gave me my first ride in a private plane. I didn't see GA again until my senior year in college when a professor was starting up a flying club and teaching ground school. As soon as I graduated and had a job, I headed to the nearest flight school.
 
No, next to nothing. My only childhood experience was growing up under right base for a busy GA airport, and ignoring it.

My kid is having a different experience. 7 months old in SFO during holidays. You could tell he thought it was a very interesting place. Flying over the Rockies in winter (CAVU), he embedded nose prints on the window and learned to say "mountain." He's been hooked ever since.
 
My parents' property borders a grass airstrip. I spent more hours watching small planes take off and land than most kids these days spend playing video games. Got my first ride in the front seat of a J-3 when I was 5 years old. I wanted to be a pilot from the moment I knew that people fly airplanes. Flew in a 172 more times than I can count, starting when I was small enough to stand up in front of the right seat. Got a lot of stories about that airstrip from when I was a kid. (Born in 1970)
 
Dad, uncle and grandfather all flew with the USN. Grew up in and around airplanes. Just sorta one of those things I always "did."

My pops and my uncle.

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No exposure as a kid, unless you count world book encyclopedia, or black sheep squadron. First airplane ride was commercial flight in my late 20's, I thought that was really, really, cool, but never thought about piloting. About 20 years later, i'm not sure why but I started thinking about it, getting curious. Maybe a book I read set in the 1930's where a random reference to flying took me by surprise. A 'they were flying back then? they barely had electricity and were flying, whats my excuse?' kind of moment? Curiosity led me eventually to a discovery flight. Anyway, I'm hopefully 3/4 through with my PPL, enjoying it.
 
Read this article. See where my name is mentioned and it provides a good link to my aviation heritage. :D
 

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  • Nell Rice - Lady Antiquer Article - AAA Digest (1971).pdf
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My father and uncle were both civilian pilots. I started "flying" when I was around 6 years old.
 
Had planes growing up as a kid and just flew in them and never thought of it.

Then one day took a cruise to Alaska. A pre-cruise excursion was hiring a plane to fly is around mt McKinley. Ever since that day I promised I would learn to fly. Never had the time or the money at the same time until now. Now all I think about is why didn't I make it happen earlier. Think of all those years I wasted.

By the way, I'm putting my 14yr old through a landing class so that if the old mans ticker goes out in the air, he can hopefully land!!!


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Not only was I not introduced to flying as a youth, but my mother really didn't think much of me becoming a pilot. I can't imagine what stirred the desire in my tender years, but I ALWAYS wanted to be a pilot, and can't honestly recall not wanting to be one. Self starter.
 
Grandfather on mother's side bent metal for airplane skin and worked on turbines on the aft side WWII.

Father was engineer and SAR pilot in USCG until he retired as an admiral.

None had significance until I was 50 when I thought "What am I waiting for?"
 
I built a P-51 control cable plane when I was 9 - didn't even make it one loop before it crashed. I flagged for crop dusters all the time when I worked on farms. My first ride was in a crop duster. I like cantaloupe.

The rest is history.
 
Timbeck2 said:
I flagged for crop dusters all the time when I worked on farms. My first ride was in a crop duster. I like cantaloupe.

The rest is history.
Click to expand...

Ahh that's what's wrong with you, standing under that spray pattern. I like cantaloupe too though. ;):)
 
I never knew anyone who was a pilot, owned a plane, or let me sit in one or gave me a ride in a plane until the day started taking lessons at 16.
 
My great uncle took me in his Stearman when I was 11 or 12. Which is only like 8 years ago. He let me fly it for awhile. He lived in one of the private airport communities where instead of garages you had hangers. I also always grew up going to airshows in FortWorth and I went to DC and saw the Smithsonian flight museum, actually i've been to flight museums all over the country. I even talked to a CIA SR-71 pilot standing infront of the actual plane he flew.
 
My father, Vance Breese was a test pilot and I grew up around friends of his like Bob Hoover, Dutch Kindleberger, Jack Northrup, Paul Mantz and Scott Crossfield.
I intentionally headed in a different direction and didn’t get a pilot’s license till I was 59.
 
Vance Breese said:
My father, Vance Breese was a test pilot and I grew up around friends of his like Bob Hoover, Dutch Kindleberger, Jack Northrup, Paul Mantz and Scott Crossfield.
I intentionally headed in a different direction and didn’t get a pilot’s license till I was 59.
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Cant escape whats in your blood huh :D
 
Vance Breese said:
My father, Vance Breese was a test pilot and I grew up around friends of his like Bob Hoover, Dutch Kindleberger, Jack Northrup, Paul Mantz and Scott Crossfield.
I intentionally headed in a different direction and didn’t get a pilot’s license till I was 59.
Click to expand...

Very cool!
 
My father and uncle were both pilots. Grew up around bush type planes. All I dreamed about as a kid. Worked paper routes, mowed cemetary and sold night crawlers. Soon as I turned 15 I started taking lessons and I paid for them mostly by myself. I remember when I was a kid and when I heard my dads floatplane coming I would be on a dead run to the beach.A horrible sickness, has cost me thousands over the years.
 
dad = air force, Vietnam, captain 747-400 international flights, Northwest Airlines

now retired
 
Growing up dad worked on various aircraft for Lockheed and Northrop - so lots of open houses over the years, but no pilots in the family.

A friend of the family took me and my dad in a 172 when I was 10. I got to fly some between Oxnard and Santa Barbara - I was hooked. Fast forward and I'm 38 and prepping for my checkride.
 
My Uncle Art was a WWII P-38 pilot. When I was in the 4th grade he took me and 5 buddies for a ride in his J-3. One at a time. That was all it took.
 
Grew up in Alaska. First flight when I was 7 or 8 yrs old, in a family friend's Cherokee 6 (he took most of my family up for quick sightseeing trip). My twin brother took flying lessons at 17 and couldn't get anyone to rent him an airplane for his long cross country. He convinced me to go partners on a '67 Citabria. I took my first lesson in that plane. Have always owned aircraft since that day (several decades ago...).
 
My dad was a parts guy for a corporate flight department at BFL. Grew up hitching rides on their Gulfstreams every time they would have to go do currency checks or flight testing. (G-II, G-III, G-IV)

Born with the bug. One day, they let me sit jumpseat on the IV. Ruined me for life.

Pretty much spent my spare time between the airport and the farm. Had an old Sears 8 band radio that I'd pick up Center and Tower on...wore through a truckload of D-cell batteries hanging out at the farm looking up at the sky.

Besides being an airport bum with a three-wheeled golf cart and unfettered access to Meadows Field, we'd head up the road to Minter and hang out with the mechanics and pilots at The Birds Nest--a classic shop that was there with several stearmans.

The air show was more important to me than the county fair.

I was probably 8-9 years old and sitting on a big tug at Minter acting like I was driving.

The tug was nicely painted...had a big #7 on it. Yes, THAT #7. A man who I would later discover to be the infamous racer with a name similar to an African cat came over and turned the tug on and told me to "try not to hit anything."

I drove that tug around millions of dollars in warbirds and mustangs for the better part of the night.

Too broke and too big to fly the rest of my adolescent years.

My step-grandfather had a hangar ornament '59 180. He was a retired LAPD helo pilot who lost the passion but kept the bird. When he passed a year and a half ago, my dad and I both set off to get motivated (dad had 29 hours from before I was born)

Prior to this, I did 10 hrs in a 172 when I was 25.

I enrolled in a flight school in AZ while I was working but quit a week before my checkride because the plane dumped both mags for a second time.

Dad had just bought a 1960 Skylark to fill the hangar where the 180 was.

I bought a Socata TB-9 and got my ticket 8/22/2015.

Tomorrow I'll fly it up for its third oil change..which makes it 150 hrs since I bought it in July, and 195hrs total time in the logbook.




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My dad worked on the Viking Mars lander, Voyager and the Space Shuttle so I was exposed to those projects along with others. He was the head welder for a NASA subcontractor (Rocket Research in Redmond, WA now AreoJet) and I was lucky enough to meet people like Dick Scobee when I was young. My dad had a co worker that took me up for my first flight in a 39 Taylorcraft and I was hooked. I doubt that I let my dads friend know how excited I was as I remember feeling kind of like a zombie for the entire flight. After that it was, as someone posted earlier,
Star Wars
Top Gun
Iron Eagle
The Last Starfighter
Airplane!
The Right Stuff
Jet Pilot

When my oldest brother married his second wife I became aware of her grandfather, Greg "Pappy" Boyington and met the pilot that shot him down while I was at an air show.
 
I can't remember a time when I was not flying with my father or grandfather. My father always had planes, mostly in rebuild. I can remember a time when my grandfather had a Twin Bonanza, Apache, and a Tripacer all at one time. I still don't know how my dad got so much done. At the end of the day and weekends the two of us would be at the airport doing maintenance or flying. Great memories.
 
luvflyin said:
Stewardesses
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Good point. While I already had been bitten by the aviation bug hard by that time, at 14 I remember flying on Argentine Airlines and meeting a flight attendant who was the most beautiful woman I'd ever seen.
 
I have an uncle who I was very fond of. When I was about seven or eight years old, he drove my mother and I to LAX for a flight to visit family in Arkansas. He saw my interest in flying and we began to talk about airplanes and flying at each visit. He wasn't a pilot himself, but had a few private pilot lessons when he was in the Air Force.

When I was about ten or eleven years old, we went to an air show and he bought a ride for us in a 172. I was able to "fly" the airplane myself for a few minutes and that sealed my desire to become a pilot. We did this again about two years later. We continued to talk aviation and make trips to the local airport at every opportunity.

When I earned my private license, he was the second person I took flying, the first being my wife to be. He was so excited and I know if not for him, I would never have had a long and rewarding career as a pilot. Thanks Uncle Olen.
 
My earliest aviation memory was that my mom's doctor had his ticket and a plane. He promised to take me flying but never followed through. I never forgave him for that.

I got in to model rockets, toy-grade rc, flight sims, and went to airshows. I remember reading anything aviation-related I could find in the library. Eventually I got glasses and the flying dream died.

Life happened for a few decades, then, as an adult, I got bit hard by the hobby-grade rc bug. A few years later, my wife bought me a demo flight. Game over, man, game over! Five years later, I have the keys to a club plane.

It gradually dawned on me that I was surrounded by GA airports as a kid but never knew about them. So, I've been taking my son to the airport for breakfast when I can, and I got him a cockpit poster for his room and he helps me "preflight" it before bed. He likes transportation and weather, so I am hopeful that he'll be interested in flying in a few more years.
 
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No single event. Dad was FSS so I was exposed to GA at various airports that we moved to. Still, never gave a serious thought about flying until I was exposed to military aviation. Guard flew helos to my high school as a kid and thought that would be something cool to do.

Air shows, plastic models and model rockets were my childhood interests.
 
Timbeck2 said:
I built a P-51 control cable plane when I was 9 - didn't even make it one loop before it crashed. I flagged for crop dusters all the time when I worked on farms. My first ride was in a crop duster. I like cantaloupe.

The rest is history.
Click to expand...

I flagged for my dad a fair amount as a teenager. He'd show me the field on the map and send me out on my dirt bike. I rode with him in his S2R Thrush once when it was new when I was about 10. I also worked in watermelon field pitching. It took me a long time to like watermelon again. We didn't have many cantaloupe and never worked them. I can take them or leave them. :D
 
First one in the family to show any interest in airplanes.
First plane ride was when I was 10 years old. DC-8 from the west coast to Hong Kong with refueling stops in Anchorage and Tokyo. Fun, but left no lasting impression.
Next exposure was an airshow in 1969. The Blue Angels were flying F-4s (with the OEM factory "airshow smoke"). That left an impression. Art Scholl in his Super Chipmunk and Bob Hoover in the Shrike Commander too.
By that time I was starting to modify cars and race them on weekends.
Took a Cessna Flight Centre introductory flight in a 150, and was hooked by the time the airplane struggled to 50 ft AGL. After discovering airplanes, wrenching on cars became boring.

Only other aviator in the family is my youngest brother...who decided to show me how it's really done: MD Hornet pilot, military instructor, 3 tours in the Middle East flying choppers, now flies a Boeing 787 to pay the grocery bill.
 
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