What got you into flying?

[Admin]

Thought I would start a thread to hear how you got into flying...what made you suddenly think about learning to fly or was it a family thing?

 

For me I wanted to be a pilot or a policeman when I was a kid but an eye accident stopped those dreams until later in life I accidentally found out that I could fly...you know, saying something at the right time and place, so within a week I had my first lesson and the rest is history.

 

How did you get into flying?

 

 

[facthunter]

Started building powered models at age 10. Saved for a Frog 150 by selling newspapers. Nev

 

 

[ben87r]

Grandfather flew privately back in the golden era, not sure exactly how that transferred onto me but I'm into cars, bikes, boats too so seems like it would be the next logical step in expensive interests.

 

 

[rgmwa]

Started building control line models at 13. Saved for my first model and an OS.15 by collecting parcels from the railway station for my parents' business at 10 cents a parcel.

 

rgmwa

 

 

[Guest Howard Hughes]

Went on my first aircraft at age 3, decided there and then. Of course man landed on the moon the next year and that just cemented it!

 

 

[ClintonB]

At less than 2 I had a flight to hospital from a sheep station, later a 6 I got a ride in a Commanche to Clarke Island which stuck with me.From then I always remember wanting to fly. I built models( and crashed them). Then a mate took me to Cranbourne in the Tamar Valley. You could not of wiped the grin of my head with a 4 by 2 after my TIF. I used my Army reserve pay to pay for lessons in a Thruster. Then I got hitched with a girl which killed flying. 19 years later and a lot of wishing, I found out that the AUF existed in a new form and I could learn in Tamworth. After 9 months of training I got to realise a dream and be able to fly an aircraft on my own.

 

 

[Yenn]

I was working in the bush and getting good money. A Mackay flying school advertised they were coming to Collinsville and from there on in I was hooked.

 

 

[Kiwi303]

I went to the same primary school as the son of Max Clear of Micro Aviation/Bantam B22, Maxs wife was my Teacher of the Deaf who came to the school several times a week to act as a teacher aide. She got Max to take me up in a Bantam a couple of times.

 

 

[kgwilson]

I had a fascination with flying things from a very early age. I dreamed of being a fighter pilot & read every "Air Ace" war comic I could lay my hands on. I had Spitfire & Hurricane gliders made from a sheet of balsa wood & cut out, a bit of plastercene on the nose & they flew well. There were lots of designs & they cost only a few pennies each. I built numerous kites of all sorts of designs mainly out of brown paper & whatever sticks were available.

 

Then at about 10 I built my very first model aircraft with a 3/4 cc diesel engine. It was free flight as radio control in the 50s was finacially out of my reach even though I was earning 22 shillings a week delivering newspapers. I built a Cessna model with a huge 1.5cc diesel engine (I still have that engine today) but once in my teens my attention became diverted by girls and motorbikes & it was not until I discovered Hang Gliding while travelling through Switzerland in 1973 that I regained my interest & built one when I returned to NZ in 75.

 

I flew Hang Gliders for around 20 years & then as my disposable income had increased somewhat got my PPL & now have converted to a RA Pilot Certificate & built my own aircraft.

 

 

[octave]

What got me into flying?

 

Mid to late 60s - apollo program, living near Edinborough air base S.A. airshows The helicopter on skippy.

 

70s Moved to a house within the circuit area at Parafield. Sitting on the porch watching Chris Sperou. Saving up for a joy flight.

 

Late 70s Joined the Air Training Corp band and later joined RAAF as a musician. Lived on RAAF Base Richmond. Worked in band room next to the runway. Enjoyed watching Caribous landing on the grass strip metres from the band room. Twelve tears of extensive travel mainly in a C130 but also got to sit on the back ramp of a chinook whilst in flight.

 

Late 80s - Decided it was ridiculous to love flying so much but not actually fly myself. Came across an article about the new and exciting Thruster TST, booked in for a trail flight and eventually got my cert. After a year or so priorities changed, started family, left RAAF, less income etc, decided I had been there and done that.

 

2007 - my wife bought a trial instruction flight for christmas, I did consider this the be a one of flight but.......

 

 

[Bernie]

I used to collect beer bottles 10 shillings a hundred then take a joy fly't at Bankstown airport in a Rapide .(early 50's)

 

Plus mucked around with models , still have two of my old engines one diesel one glow plug . (made our own diesel fuel in those days .)

 

Bernie .

 

 

[cscotthendry]

All of the above!

 

 

[Jabiru Phil]

I had 3 tyre blowouts on the Birdsville track in the 80's.

 

When arriving at the Birdsville pub with blisters on hands and very grubby, I was asked by a guy dressed in white shirt and tie how did I go with my puncture?

 

Turned out he was a pilot and flew over me a few hours before.

 

That's when I decided to take up flying.

 

PHIL.

 

 

[Nightmare]

My Dad got his PPL in the 1960's. I remember with great fondness going up with him in his Piper Cherokee as a kid. It was with that inspiration I always wanted to be a pilot. So finally, I bit the bullet with the help of my wife who purchased a TIF for me, at the age of 50, and I started my flight training for my RPC which I attained in February this year. And I still think it's awesome.

 

 

 

 

[Nico13]

 

My Dad was in the RAAF during WWII, he was ground crew LAC on Kittyhawks at Tarakan.

 

I always thought as a kid he flew them and always wanted to fly like my dad.

 

I found out when a little older he was the guy who kept them flying, it didn't lower pride in him or the want to fly.

 

I spent ten years working at Avalon on Mirage and then FA18A's when they first arrived. Have flown all sorts of RC planes and helicopters.

 

It just took me a while to get my act together, about twenty eight years more.

 

 

[ron dunn]

Started playing around with free flight and control line models at around 14/15 and have been in and out of models ever since.( latter years being radio control)

 

Took my first glider flight in 1969 and went on to do around 800 hours, a lot of that instructing.

 

Did around 200 hours with GA and then found the old ultralight federation not long after it became of age. My membership number is 2311 so says something.

 

Have over 3000 rec aviation hours now. Started my own school in 1992 and have had a wonderful 46 years or so of flying activity.

 

About the best of it was when a group of us went to WA and gained our diamond height awards. (Soared mountain wave to 22000 thousand feet!!)

 

 

[MartincaF1]

I shared a house with a RAAF techy in the '80s who was a private pilot, and went on 2-3 private flights with him. Fast forward to 2016 and an ad hoc conversation with a home loan client (I run a mortgage broking business) sparked my interest in flying lessons again. I've been 'right into' space shuttles, astronaut stories, the ISS etc. and always looked at small aircraft. After this recent conversation I visited 4 Adelaide flying schools, asked another client who's a LAME, then settled on lessons at Aldinga in an Evektor SportStart SL. Cool. Have completed Lesson 6 - Circuits so have a bit of learning still to do... :)

 

 

[NT5224]

I always wanted to fly.

 

My Dad is a lifelong aviation enthusiast and he is my inspiration. Dad would tell me about a relo of ours who was one of the early pioneers of flight in UK and well known for founding an aviation company and some classic aircraft. As a radio/ avionics engineer Dad himself flew into Berlin during the airlift, and would tell me of his youthful adventures in Lancasters and Mosquitos.

 

I read WE Johns avidly as a lad, but learning to fly remained an unacheived dream: Life went in a very different direction. Then one day about 13 years ago we were visiting down south on Melbourne cup day. My wife and I were sat in a park and a little plane was sky writing overhead. My wife saw me looking up and said, "just do it. Learn to fly, don't wait, do it now". The next day made a few phone calls and discovered the AUF, and that flying doesn't have to break the bank. So a big thanks to the AUF for making a dream come true.

 

 

[bull]

My Dad was in the Royal Australian Navy and my first real memory of aircraft and wanting to fly was when I was 5 or 6 year old and my Dad had brought me a pedal car back from overseas deployment whilst he was on the HMAS Melbourne . A family day out on the old carrier saw me pedalling around on the flight deck under the wings of Skyhawk jets and sea Vampire fighters and those bloody big Gannets, while being chased by a number of able seamen around the deck ,,will always remember it ,they had set up one of the aircraft lift tunnels as a ghost tunnel with ab,s in costume scaring the shit out of us. Awesome memories of watching cat launches and landings from the viewing platform on the bridge tower and running around all over the grand old lady. {something that with todays safety culture and security problems will never happen again]

 

 

[red750]

I was a country lad raised on a dairy farm in West Gippsland. I was taken on a trip to Melbourne by my aunt, and we went up in an old lift that jumped, rattled an bounced. I was so scared by it I insisted we walk down the stairs. So my family thought there was no way I would ever go in an aeroplane. A few years later, we moved to Deniliquin, where my father joined the St John Ambulance, and manned the town ambulance at weekends. One weekend there was an airshow at the Deni airport and we went along. Just as we arrived, a Chipmunk performing aerobatics crashed and the pilot was killed. However, watching the airshow sparked an interest.

 

I built gliders and rubber powered aircraft, and plastic scale models of fighters, bombers and airliners. When I left school, I applied for a job as a LAME with Ansett-ANA, and came to Essendon for an interview, where I was shown around a hangar, and allowed in the cockpit of a Convair 404 that was in the maintenance hangar, and Sir Reg's Bell helicopter parked outside. Unfortunately all vacancies had been filled, so I returned to high school for another year. My family moved to the city, and we lived in Pascoe Vale, under the approach the runway 27 at Essendon, with airliners and freighters flying low over the house day and night.

 

When I started work and had some money, I travelled back and forth between Essendon and the city in the helicopter shuttle service. One day I summoned the courage (and cash) to take a TIF at Moorabbin in a C152. The bug had well and truly bitten. I saved my cash, and found an advert by Civil Flying School offering a full time course to restricted PPL over 3 weeks. The rest as they say, is history.

 

 

[Mick]

My father was an aircraft enthusiast & RC modeller so I grew up around models and going to airshows.

 

In my mid teens I took up model flying and at age 20 when I was getting myself into a financial position to be able to fly I was diagnosed with a genetic medical condition that I thought had put an end to my dreams of flying.

 

At that point I dedicated myself to competitive model aerobatics culminating in representing Australia in 1996.

 

Soon after that I learnt that I could fly ultralights but the early rag & tube stuff is not my cup of tea. Then in 2003 I attended an airshow & saw a Tecnam & the Jabs. In 2004 at age 33 I finally learnt to fly.

 

Since then I have owned 3 aircraft and done approx 750 hours enjoying every one of them.

 

 

[Jay_1984]

School project in grade 4 on space started it all. By the end of the project I wanted to be an astronaut.

 

By the time I hit year 7 the fascination for space had expanded to all things that flew.

 

Since then all I've wanted to do was fly. After trying for the Air Force at the end of year 12 (and getting knocked back) I found a job in warehousing and started saving little by little for flight training.

 

Now I'm in my thirties with hard slogged for PPL and just shy of the hours needed for a CPL. Then I can say goodbye finally to Logistics and go do something I want to do.

 

 

[alf jessup]

Don't know but apparently I used to leave the kitchen table even at dinner time or run outside anytime day or night when I heard a plane at 3 years of age my mother informed me as I got older, not much has changed and I'm currently 53

 

Have a default mode in my neck called looking up anytime I hear or see a plane

 

Alf

 

 

[farri]

It was the mid eighties and I was 38 years of age! One day I noticed this funny looking machine being built on the front yard of one of my neighbours property! It finally got the better of my curiosity so I went in and introduced myself to the two guys who were working on it, they were, John Allen and Garry Theodore and the funny looking machine was an experimental attempt to build an Ekranoplan (Ground Effect Vehicle).

 

Garry, told me about Ultralight aircraft ( I didn`t have a clue what they were ) and that a local club had just been formed in Cairns! The members were having a meeting that night and Garry invited me to attend, so I did.

 

Weeks later, Garry invited me to watch him fly the Trike he`d built from scratch. He assembled it, fired it up, flew off and my spirit flew off with him! A few weeks later he took me to see the Ultralight he was building, from scratch! it was a copy of the Chinook WT2! I took one look at it and thought, " I can do that!" So I did.

 

They were the days when twin seat Ultralights were illegal in Australia so there were no twin seat aircraft for training! The idea of finding an instructor, somewhere, who would stand on the ground and watch me fly didn`t appeal to me so to test fly the aircraft I`d built, I first had to learn to fly it, so I did!

 

And that`s how I started flying.

 

Frank.

 

 

[Pearo]

I got a slightly different story.. I learned to fly to overcome a fear of flying!! That and the fact that I have always had in interest in aviation.