Early Spring 1964,

17 years old....driving home from Crawfordsville, Ind. after a high school basketball game. My girlfriend, me and another couple. We spied a little grasstrip airport along the state highway with a sign that said....."AIRPLANE RIDES....$2.00." None of the four of us had ever had our feet off the ground. We chipped in and came up with $6.00. By buddy was scared to go. So myself and the two girls were treated to a :15 minute ride in a Navion over the fields of central Indiana.

Love at first flight...but no money. It would be two more years before I flew again. This time in 1966 as a student pilot in a C-120.

First Commercial Airline flight was in July of 1969. From Terre Haute Ind. to St. Louis, Mo. in a Lake Central Airline Convair 580. Connected on a TWA B-707 from St. Louis to Kansas City and on to ABQ, NM. Connected in ABQ on a Continental Airlines DC-9 to El Paso, Texas.

There I began Army Basic Training at Ft. Bliss Texas.

By then I had a commercial, multi-engine, flight instructor rating and was on my way to a wonderful career in aviation.

Memories.

bob

p.s. That girlfriend and I broke up in 1966.. She married my best friend after he came home from Viet Nam in 1969. Her oldest son married my oldest daughter in 2002. They now have three children. So she and I have three grandchildren in common....yet we were never married. Nothing to do with first flight I know....

Uncle Walter took me up in his friend's Luscombe. It was on skis, and tied down in Caribou ME.

O-52...1953



a radial engined, tail-dragger retract.

First flight: Some TWA wide body from LAX to HNL when I was 12.

First GA flight: Piper Warrior II on a charter from Burley, ID to Sun Valley (Hailey, ID). I had started ground school that my boss (retired Air Force F-4 driver and then rancher) was teaching one night a week for 3 months. The local FBO came up to say hi and offered anyone that wanted the chance to ride up with them to Hailey to check it out. I called every chance I could to grab the seat for the ride...took a female friend along once too. I was 15 at the time, soloed at 16, licensed at 17.

Getting to know the FBO owner's soon landed me a job as a lineman which allowed me another way to earn $$ to pay for flying during the winter (no hand pipes to move or cattle to care for then). This lead me to my first really cool airplane ride: a Beech Staggerwing. My very first day working at the FBO, the owners bought me a pop and set me out on the bench in front of the FBO to wait for a plane to come in. Out walked a man from the FBO and asked if I wanted to go for a ride in his plane, motioning to his Staggerwing. I told him I didn't know if I could but he said to go ask. I walked inside and informed my new bosses that someone wanted to take me for a ride. They asked who. I said someone with the white plane outside. They looked at me and just said "Go!". I remember the big cabin, fast acceleration (compared to the Piper) and the incredible climb performance. It was exhilarating! Later it was used as the background for my senior pictures. A few years ago I saw him and his plane at the Smiley Creek Father's Day Fly-in. It was good to see him and it still flying!

qmdv wrote:Could not stop looking at the stews.


Just loved the boots

Tim

Wow! Recruiting and hiring seriously took a wrong turn somewhere along the lines. Far from what is working the isles today!

Probably about 3 or 4 in grandfathers 337 from eko to somewhere in Texas. Got an ear block and made their flight as miserable as mine... Most memorable to date- first flight in a bearhawk, thanks blackrock! Now I am obsessed.

I think that was right. Dad would remember. I think.

May of 2001, I was 9 yrs old on a 747 on my way to vancouver from england. Stewardess took my brother and I up to the cockpit since it was our first airplane ride, I remember the captain pointing at the horizon and saying that way was Canada. I was wondering how he knew since all I could see were clouds below us. Fast forward to 2008, on a family holiday in courd' elane Idaho, I sat up front on a float plane ride in a beaver, pilot said "have a go at it", so for 5 minutes I kept us pointed towards a mountain he showed me in the distance, and I was hooked, soloed the next year, licensed in 2010, and now I'm living the dream working on logging helicopters on Vancouver island. Aviation has been a fun ride so far, one things seems to lead to another.

General Aviation: 1978 Cessna 172.

12 February 1963, Cessna 182E N9304X, Fullerton CA:

My first GA was with my dad in his C-140 at about 7 yrs old. Around 1980, not sure exactly. I remember looking at the bottom of the wing, and feeling sick

Mine was as a 5 yr old sitting on my mother's lap in the front of a J-3 with dad flying from the back. I can remember watching my dog chasing us along side the open door, then all at once he was falling away as we lifted off.

I was 4, dad borrowed Rocketdyne's Bell 47, landed in the cull de sac we lived on in Northridge. Flew my brother and I out to the Santa Susanna mountains, where we got to watch a Minuteman missile engine test fired on the stand from the blockhouse, at night! Still my earliest memory of two ultra cool things. Back then, they could take kids to do and see the fun stuff they worked on. Now all is hidden behind a veil of security. I still remember going through the plywood DC-9 at Long Beach and hopping in dad's A4 at El Toro in the reserves.

dogpilot wrote:I was 4, dad borrowed Rocketdyne's Bell 47, landed in the cull de sac we lived on in Northridge. Flew my brother and I out to the Santa Susanna mountains, where we got to watch a Minuteman missile engine test fired on the stand from the blockhouse, at night! Still my earliest memory of two ultra cool things. Back then, they could take kids to do and see the fun stuff they worked on. Now all is hidden behind a veil of security. I still remember going through the plywood DC-9 at Long Beach and hopping in dad's A4 at El Toro in the reserves.

Fantastic memory! I watched a space shuttle rocket booster test fire from a vantage point just over a small hill from United Technologies facility in South San Jose back in the '80s. It was fired inverted with the exhaust headed straight up.

UT personell came out to the road where we had gathered and handed out foam ear plugs. They told us to put them in and hold our hands over our ears. Rock your world!!! I'm still impressed all these years later. We were really close.

EB

1968. I was a kid on a FS district fire crew in Central WA. We had a lightning bust so the boss contracted a Bell 47 for initial attack. It landed in the horse pasture and I an another kid were put on board with our smoke chaser packs in the baskets. Neither of us had ever flow in anything before. The pilot lifted it about two feet and we came right back down. He told us to unload some gear. We threw a couple one gallon canteens out and tried again. He dragged the skids on the ground for about 30 feet and we lifted off. We flew to a smoke on a 7000 foot knife ridge. The pilot held the helicopter in a hover with the front of the skids on the ridge top. He said, "Jump out and unload your gear". When we had all the gear unloaded he flew away. We spent two day on the ridge mopping up a 1/4 acre lightning fire then walked dow to the nearest road. We were in 7th hog heaven the whole time and I was hooked on flying. It would scare the crap out of me to do that today.

A couple years later I was on a helitack crew and we landed at Cle Elum for some project work. the pilot and I were wandereing around some old falling down hangars. One had an Aercoup in it. Our pilot told me, "These are really cool airplanes, they don't have rudder pedals so its just like driving a car". I decided right then and there that some day I would learn to fly and it would be in an Aercoup.

First airplane flight was 1974. The FS flew I and another kid home from a fire from Ellensburg to Cascade locks in a Cessna 180.

Found a card from a flight in a Travelair with my name on it must have been before WW2 then flight in a coupe about 1946 with my uncle who was flting out of JC OR Stibnite ID, been hocked ever since.

Bent Prop wrote:Found a card from a flight in a Travelair with my name on it must have been before WW2 then flight in a coupe about 1946 with my uncle who was flting out of JC OR Stibnite ID, been hocked ever since.

That Stibnite mine is about to reopen soon. Test drills have been showing very impressive signs of billions of dollars worth of gold and other bi-products. The airstrip is still there, too.

Labor Day weekend, 1976. I was 5 years old, sitting on my Dad's lap in the front seat of his Stearman (N9914H) while his partner took us around the patch. My only restraint was his arms wrapped around my waist, which was apparently sufficient in the 70's. It was at the National Stearman Fly-In at Galesburg, IL where I grew up. It was all over after that.

My Dad passed away when I was 12 and we sold his ha;f of the Stearman. For a little irony, almost 30 years to the month I first flew in it, I tracked it down and convinced the owner who is now in his 70's to sell it back to me. It's a little worse for wear but still fly's like a swiss watch. My boys (8 & 11) will now get to rub their little sweaty palms over the same tubes I did when I first flew in it. Might even let em' solo it one of these days once they master the Cub.

Mike-

My first ride was with Mr. Coyote Ugly himself... don't quite remember in what, I was probably only a few hours old. I've been trying to see what's over the next horizon ever since. Aviation has given me countless wonderful memories.... And taken away some of my dearest....but one things for sure, next chance I get, I'll be out flying....trying to find that next adventure.... I can't wait.

For 58 Skylane my uncle was a machinest in Stibnite during WW2 and left when the mine closed, our next trip to JC we will try to get up and see the mine. Thanks for the note