When did your love start?

originally posted by: penroc3
a reply to: Trillium

Sir,

How old was she in this pic. I'm so jealous of her, and where was this taken? I assume your flying how long have you been flying and what have you flown so far in life?

She just turn 15 she in air cadet here in Canada
As for me first time to pilot a plane it was T6 Texan pilot maker from WWII
In Florida Warbird Adventure
WarBird Adventure

Since freakin birth, I popped out of my mother in a flight suit with aviators on then Kenny Loggins started playing over the intercom for some reason. LMAO!

I grew up under one of the flight paths in and out of BNA and my dad built a lot of models, mostly airplanes but several tanks as well. I`ve been to every single airshow around Nashville and often make it to Ft. Campbells show every now and then. My father worked for a ramp service at the airport and I often got to go with him for various reasons. I`ve sat in "The Olde Crow" P-51 and several other old warbirds when they stopped in heading to the airshow back in the late 80`s.

It had to be maybe 1992 or 1993 when the F-117s we making their airshow appearances and I`ll never forget when I got up close to it. At the shows the Nighthawks were surrounded by MPs and a rope keeping people away, I remember the MPs had guns and I kept trying to ask one what kind it was, they didn't say anything. After walking around the plane several times I was standing in front of it looking at the pitot tubes with other kids that were convinced they were machine guns. Not passing up the chance I unloaded my 6 year old mind on them and I suppose the crew chief or maybe even pilot over heard and came over to talk to us. Not recalling how it happened or what was said I remember he picked me up and walked over to the left intake so I could look in and by the hand he led me around and under the aircraft letting me touch the underside of the wing, peering into the engines, and look up into the bomb bay. As far as I know not many other were allowed to get that close to the F-117s.

Some other childhood memories involve the static display F-105G Thunderchief outside the Arnold AFB entrance, Capt. Yokum of the US Army and his AH-64 Apache at the same airshow but different year. They were letting the public sit in both seats of the Apache and given a quick going over by the flight crew, my dad said I held the line up for almost 10 minutes when I was in the pilots seat and I never got to the gunners seat. Also have been to the USS Alabama battleship memorial park and the US Naval museum in Pensacola several times and hope to go again. One of these days I`d like to go on a nation wide tour of ALL the aviation museums to see all the planes I haven't yet and end it at the Oshkosh airshow. Maybe even make it to Farnborough at least once.

My paternal grandparents were both aviators. My grandfather flew for the Navy in WWII (can't remember what he flew), then flew Skyraiders and Skyhawks during Korea, by Vietnam he was in the Reserve and was an instructor flying the same. He remained active in the Reserve through his later years. My grandmother flew PT-19s as a WASP around the Great Lakes. Both were active in CAP, which they passed onto my father who was involved with CAP through his high school years.

My Dad actually had his pilot's license before his driver's license, eventually became an instructor, and can instruct for darn near anything. What started off as something for fun and on weekends has been his "retirement job" for a few years now too. Some of my oldest memories are going to air shows, plus I always had all kinds of aviation books and toys growing up. When I was old enough, I also became involved in CAP, though my local squadron has very little to do with the "air" aspect and I did not stick around very long. I've been flying since the mid-1990s.

a reply to: penroc3

Honestly, my thing is and always has been the Navy, ships, and especially submarines. I grew up vacationing near Brunswick NAS and I vividly remember going to Bath to watch the Ticonderoga's being built. I even remember seeing the Shiloh's launch back when they still slid them down the ways. Between that, visiting the Albacore and learning about the Portsmouth shipyard, the Thresher, etc, and watching the P-3's taking off over Thomas Point Beach every half hour during reagan-era patrols, preschool-aged me was hooked.

I remember my parents taping the NOVA episode where they took camera crews on board the USS Michigan on a patrol out of Bangor, between that and the NOVA on airships, I think I wore that VHS tape out as a kid.

When I moved closer to Hanscom AFB in the early 90's, when it was still busy and seeing KC-135s, starlifters, C-5's, E-3s, JStars, and the occasional F-16, F-18, or A-10 was commonplace, that sealed the deal.

I'm happy with where life has taken me, but to this day, my biggest regret is not responding to the deluge of recruitment materials from Annapolis after I got a couple good test scores in high school.

a reply to: skunkape23

I used to fly in bush planes in Alaska on a very regular basis back in the late '80's, and early '90's; going into unimproved airports and not so airports...

...and it could be nerve wracking in the extreme. So I understand where you're coming from.

The smaller planes were actually less nerve wracking then the larger ones, because I could see out better.

Good times... Good times...

Where? Well, it would have looked like this at about 13...



Oh, we're talking about airplanes. We used to go to air shows. A lot. I think I was maybe 5 when we started. And then there was that time I got to watch an SR-71 take off. And we lived within watching distance of Cape Canaveral, you could see them going up. I was about 6 when we got to go in the VAB for Apollo 11, and then got to see it on the vehicle mover.

a reply to: SonofaSkunk
I didn't get into aircraft until I went to work at Lockheed Georgia when I was nineteen. Started working on C5s.
In the over 28 years that I worked there, I managed to work on nearly everything Lockheed made. LM in Georgia
is located on Dobbins AF Base and shares runways with the Guard and back when Navel Air Station. I was lucky
enough to get into a VR unit of the navel reserves and became aircrew. So I worked both sides of the runway so to
speak. I got to travel the world and get paid for that, and bagged a great carrier at Lockheed. Retired 5 years ago.

a reply to: Zaphod58



I'd forgotten an incident with my dad, and I, at a local airshow. I'd just gotten into airplane, and military history, books...and I knew it all...

We were walking along the flight line and there was a Grumman F8F Bearcat there on static display. It had been restored to it's post-WW2 navy paint job.

In an aside, the Bearcat was quite a departure from Grummans WW2 fighters, the Wildcat and Hellcat, as it was much more lightly built and maneuverable.

Anyway, while he worked with Air Force aircraft from the 40's through the early '60's; he wasn't as familiar with naval aircraft...

I think I chirped something along the lines of "Wow, Dad, look at the Bearcat.". My dad apparently thought that was pretty cool, because I got cotton candy a few minutes later....

It used to drive him slightly nuts that I knew almost as much about the planes he'd worked on as he did... Though, obviously, not the actual nuts and bolts of it. He'd always tell me, that the planes were almost never, especially during the war years, exactly as designed, especially after being in the field for a few months.

He'd mostly say that when I was being a bit too "know it all"... ...he was right, too, usually.

a reply to: seagull

I'm very envious. Oh, the fun I'd have with a de Havilland Beaver. Or maybe even a Twin Otter. Time to go window shopping Aerotrader again...

a reply to: seagull

My father one time about gave the Vice Wing Commander and the guy working the ground control tower heart attacks.

We were setting up for open house and had just about everything parked. The plan had been to have the B-52 come in first, then we'd park everything else around it. So of course he broke before ever getting out of his home station, and wound up being one of the last ones to arrive.

New plan. He'd taxi in parallel to the parking area, and we'd tow him in since it was now packed around where he was going.

So of course my father went along with that plan, right up until he was rolling in. Then he announces to everyone the new plan. Two marshallers to bring him around the corner, with him in front of the spot as the third, and we'd just taxi him in and save time. Oh, and no reason to bother the higher ups with this plan.

So the Vice Wing Commander is up in the tower surveying the layout as the BUFF taxis in, and goes right past the tug conveniently parked to tow him in, and starts maneuvering around all these parked aircraft. He's freaking out, while the controller on duty is hiding his head waiting for the kaboom.

Meanwhile the BUFF quietly taxis into the parking spot for the open house, and shuts down without even coming close to anything else.

My favorite story my dad had told me was when the ANG was retiring the F-106 Delta Dart in the 80s and one had flown in he got to refuel it and listen to the departure on the radio. When the Dagger taxied to the end of the runway the pilot had requested a takeoff clearance to 5,000ft or 8,000ft full power takeoff. Even when seeing F-15s and F-16s at airshows I remember him saying that Delta Dagger just blew them away with its acceleration. From a dead stop at the end of the runway to being a distant thunder it was just gone in seconds.

I also had a great uncle that was a IIRC a navigator in the B-57 StratoJet in Korea, I didn't get to see him much but I have the majority of my book collection from him. I know he told me all kinds of stories but I was so young and only saw him a few times before he passed away. I didn't get to his funeral and a lot of his collection was lost. He would have been a great source to ask about some projects from the 40s-50s.

I must have been only 18 months old when I had my first memory of standing on the back steps and seeing an aircraft flying over our house in Western Sydney and being mesmerized by it. My mother at night used to read me a little Golden Book about airplanes and I used to try and match the planes in the book with what I saw (mostly 707's and DC-8's in those days) in the sky. I think she still has that book. I took my first flight shortly after in a regional service up the north coast here in an F-27, I can still remember the props out the window and the little biscuit packets they served with tea. Fast forward about 3 years and my parents decided to go and live in England for a while and travel Europe for 6 months to a year. My Dad was a photographer although he started life as an engineer making tooling dies for things like turbine blades. He gave me my first camera at age 5 shortly before we left. I took my first photos at Sydney airport and I still have them today. In fact those first few frames show one of the bays where I work today, albeit somewhat altered. That flight to London on a 747-200B blew my mind, I wanted to live on an aircraft after that.

At age 11 my class got to tour the maintenance jet base at that airport and I still remember walking under a 747-200 and jumping up to touch its belly, seeing all the overall clad engineers at work. I was in awe, little did I realize one day I would be working here. After that I began devouring aviation books, joined the Air Force Cadets through my early teenage years and went to airshows when I could.

Fast forward about 4 years from that school excursion and I'm a teenager attending an open day at the same airport jet base operated by my current employer, that was in 85. My Dad took a pic of me standing on a pedestrian crossing in front of DH-4 Caribou, A4-158. That same pedestrian crossing across an air side roadway still exists although it has changed location by a couple of meters on several occasions since, and I have used it many times. 24 years later I was reunited with that same aircraft at the Avalon International airshow and had my wife take a pic of me in a similar pose. I couldn't have dreamed in 1985 at that show that I would end up being one of those guys who works on aircraft at that same place nor that I would run into that aircraft again.

I wouldn't say that every single day I think "wow, how weird and serendipitous is life?" but I do have to pinch myself regularly and think how lucky I am to have been able to end up doing what I do. I have a 2 1/2 year old son now and he is fascinated by aircraft as they fly over our house on the same flightpath that I first saw at his age. He tells me that when he grows up that I will fix the aeroplanes and he will fix the helicopters, I hope he maintains that kind of fascination and drive, because I have done a lot of different jobs and aviation is by far the best thing I will ever do. And to think it all started as a toddler looking up into a cloudless sky not very far from where I now live and wondering what that thing in the sky was doing and why it was there.

LEE

I grew up in in the south of Hereford. Low flying Jaguars, Harriers and Tornados were a regular occurrence.
I remember sitting in the cockpit of a Buccaneer aged about 7 or 8 too. That was seriously cool. Though not a patch on being underneath a Vulcan flying over at about a hundred feet at an airshow. It was like the whole world shook as that shadow passed over.

Once, many years ago, I was tabbing across the tops of some of Brecon's more gentle peaks and 2 Harriers in close formation came barrelling down the valley BELOW me. That was a sight to behold and took my mind off all my aches and pains.


I think my first memory of military planes was watching The battle of Britain and the Dam Busters.
Always loved Spits Hurricanes and Lancs after those films, and I have a soft spot for Mosquitos too.

Sorry I know this reply won't mean much and it's quite a morbid thing to say. As my reply said on page 1 I use to go to RAF Fairford a lot. One yeah I think it was '93 I witnessed a crash. Two MiG 29s flown by two test pilots were doing their display when they got too close and collided. Both ejected safely. But never thought I'd see this at the age of 8 years old. Going back into school telling my friends what I saw I felt so so cool despite the horror that unfolded in front of us.

I still have it on VHS tape somewhere from when my dad filmed it

I have always been interested in aviation. While in school, I took an elective course in aviation science and was hooked. I started working two jobs with one to pay my tuition and one to pay for flying. After my graduation I received my draft notice for induction into the military. To avoid a bad assignment I enlisted. It was my intention to go to flight school but the army had different thought on this matter.

To make a long story short, I wound up in an airborne unit as a infantry platoon leader in Vietnam for a year. Midway through that tour I had a chance to reapply for flight school while on a dental visit to Long Bien. On my return to Ft Bragg, I completed my application and was accepted a few months later.

Upon finishing flight training I was hoping for test pilot school or cobra transition but received orders back to Vietnam. Being the senior first lieutenant I was made platoon leader of a scout platoon of OH-6s. I think I had a whopping 600 hours of flight time and I was supposed to lead... During that time I was determined to change my infantry MOS so I did a correspondence course called Military Intelligence Officer Basic Course and finished it while in Vietnam. I never would have realized what impact that would generate on my time in the military.

When my active duty obligation was finished, I was assigned to a reserve unit in Columbus,Ohio. During my interview with the brigade commander he noted that I was a qualified MI officer that was a qualified aviator. My reply was, soooo! He said, you are as scarce as hen's teeth.

I was recalled to active duty and assigned to Libby AAF,AZ for more schooling. This was my first contact with the Grumman Mohawk the plane that I would fly for 18 years. After that 9 month period I eventually made it back to my original reserve assignment.

Being a newly made civilian, I needed to find a job but the country was very anti-veteran at the time. The only job that I had was a janitor for a temporary service. I was determined not to go back to milking cows on the family farm.

I made a last ditch effort and applied to an American Eagle regional carrier as a pilot. Much to my surprise, I was hired to fly DHC-8 as a first officer. The pay was less than the janitor job but it was a better start. I would eventually fly for several regional airlines and fly several types of airplanes the final one was as captain on a Canadair Regional Jet.

I would guess that I had the best of both worlds with flying through the week as a civilian and on the weekends for the military.

a reply to: ThePeaceMaker

I had to see if it was already out there. Wasn't quite head on, but yeah, pretty amazing the pilots survived. Collision is at about 4:30, but it's a pretty good display in the preceding video as well.



In case the video doesn't work (because I have great difficulty with the yvid tags for some reason), here is a direct link to the video.

a reply to: penroc3

Hi penroc,

Mine likely started as an infant.

Before I was born my pops was on track to being the first fillipino American fighter pilot. But due to my birth and a somewhat racist social climate ('63 and he married a white girl), he was declared ineligible to fly, just after he was accepted to flight school. He had "the right stuff" as it were, excellent grades in school, letterman and record holder in football and track, college grad, but there was that fillipino thing.
I think he was quietly very bitter about that, as his uniform hung in the very back of the closet, when i was a kid, and he never took it out. And I didn't learn this whole thing till I was an adult.
  Hmmm, he raced his first motorcycle race right after  that .
I started racing at 8.
 I always had toy airplanes, pops had a 16th scale p51 gas model. 

We would go out to the ANG base and watch the planes come in.

 Then when I was about 7 i met one of my long time friends, and his dad was partners in a small helicopter Mfg. Co till his partner died testing an experimental design. He took us to the Reno air races when I was 11and man what hoot that was.

 And growing up when I did, there was no shortage of veterans that could regale you with tales of flying . I remember a former P61 pilot a P38 pilot, a teacher I had was a waist gunner on both 17's and 24's , two tours in Europe.

 Both the 61 Amd 38 pilots flew in the Pacific, and they both had stories baiting Japanese aircraft into a chase.

Invariably the Japanese would give chase, while the black widow or lightning would stay just ahead and go into a steep high speed dive towards to the water then pull up and watch the Japanese planes wings come of as they tried to pull up.

Also Pappy Boyington lived in my neighborhood, and would show up at school on occasion to give a talk.

 Of my childhood friends, one became a F15 pilot then a U2 pilot(that ultimately took his life) , and his next door neighbor went on to a career in the AF and just retired last year. Two became aeronautics engineers and worked on the B2, while not knowing each other did. Another went to become an engineer for Lockheed.






 

a reply to: cmdrkeenkid
That's the one 8 years old and seeing that was quite a 'treat' so to speak. I've been meaning to get my dads VHS tape put on to disc so I can upload it. Will be some footage that hasn't been seen before as it's been in my attic for years and years

I do hope I NEVER have to see anythin like that again

I remember going into a Walmart as a kid, in the front airlock area they always had video games and gumball/jawbreaker vending machines, one of those video games had an XB-70 on the side of it, that go my interest rolling. I was always curious about the large framed photo of a C5a on my bedroom wall as well. I had the opportunity to see the T-38 Thunderbirds at an AFA graduation, when I was six or seven which was the big jump start for me. Total side note - I got to see the last minute of a 135 feeding a couple A-10s yesterday. Amazing how low and sloooowww they seamed to be going. Actually been fortunate to see three or four cool things this past year.

a reply to: Badgermole42

My father was on one of the early A-10 drags. The tanker had to drop the gear, 10 degrees of flaps, and be slightly nose low for them to stay on the boom.