When was your first flight?

[Frank Browne]

My first airplane ride was on (I believe) a DC-3 traveling between Jacksonville and Pensacola. That was sometime around 1960 at age 6. My first GA airplane ride was at a small county airshow sometime in the early 60's. It was from a grass strip and somebody was giving rides for a penny-a-pound. My mom rode front seat and I was in the back. I simply can't remember a time in my life that I haven't loved airplanes.

 

[TangoWhiskey]

Now why the hell would I have whiskey on a flight?

Or, the poor student who opened the window and yelled "CLOUDY!" before engine start one overcast afternoon, after several initial lessons on fair-weather days....

 

[Anthony]

I think around 1975-76. I was around 9-10 yrs old and my dad took me to the annual New Garden Airshow (N57).

I used to have my Cherokee 140 (pre-Tiger) based there before I moved it to N47. I always liked that airport and went to the airshow a couple of times.

I remember going to Lenape Park, a local amusement park, but turning around in the parking lot and going home because dear god they're charging $0.50 to park!!!!!!

I remember going to Lenape Park as a kid also! But we actually went in. My parents were cheap, but not that cheap!

 

[flyersfan31]

Lenape was tons of fun. I loved it. We went there a bunch of times. Then they started that exhorbitant parking charge...and that, as they say, was that!

 

[Richard]

My first flight was a DC-6 when I was 4. In '66 my family was visiting Clearwater, FLA when the Powerpuff Derby came through. It as a big event and prit near the whole town turned out. I got to sit in someone's plane.

In '68 I flew right seat in a B-25 at Kanehoe Bay MCAS on about a :40 minute flight. Just me and the required crew. I was 10.

My first flight where I actually got the opportunity to crash the plane was in '76 when a friend invited me to fly his C-152 from Fullerton to Big Bear. We were in a climb the entire way. That was a never again flight, all because of him. I did start my PPL at that time, but I quit before solo. Too many things in life vying for my attention.

I flew with an old boss in his Warrior often during the 80s and I use to fly him on personal business trips.

I picked up flight training again in 98 but it was too spotty for a year until I really decided to devote time to the training. I finished my PPL in July 99 but would have been 8 months sooner except for the FAA Aeromedical office.

 

[Laurie]

My first GA flight was 11/22/1976. It was also my first lesson. In hindsight it was pretty insane to jump into something like that without testing the waters first. I remember thinking, "Gee this plane is small" (it was a C-150) and, "what the heck are they saying?!" (listening to ATIS).

My experience was similar - a C150, September 19, 1997 and was my first lesson as well. I had never even been to an airport before that, let alone flown commercial or otherwise. I had always had a thing for cropdusters after growing up watching them on the farm and stopped at this small strip in Iowa, literally in the middle of a cornfield, to watch a plane that was taking off. I got bold and went in and asked about a ride which is when they threw me in 704JF (juicy fruit as it came to be known to me because juliet foxtrot was way too hard to say most of the time) and I went.

Funny, I thought the 150 was BIG then.

 

[Laurie]

Now why the hell would I have whiskey on a flight?

A little off the subject but.....

Reminds me of a student I had in Montana who had a 172 with HM as the last two letters of the call sign. He insisted on saying "Cessna XXX Hotel Motel is 10 miles south......"

I couldn't ever make him stop that.

 

[Pilawt]

Reminds me of a student I had in Montana who had a 172 with HM as the last two letters of the call sign. He insisted on saying "Cessna XXX Hotel Motel is 10 miles south......"

Likewise a 210 I once rode in, N**8SW, was known to one and all as "eight Scotch Whiskey."

-- Pilawt

 

[Dave Siciliano]

Likewise a 210 I once rode in, N**8SW, was known to one and all as "eight Scotch Whiskey."

-- Pilawt

Couple friends have been nice enough to deem the last two letters of my tail number as Keep Spending. (N322KS). Ain't it nice to have good friends like this; nothing but consideration for me

Best,

Dave

 

[mrc82545]

I was at the local airport ( local at the time ) and there was a group of people lined up to take rides, first day of operation for a new FBO I found out. I got in line and took a ride in a 172, left seat, WOW, what a day and what a feeling, I was hooked. 10 years later I never forgot that day or how it felt to "fly" a plane. Just over 12 years later I went back to the same FBO and started lessons.

 

[CJones]

Couple friends have been nice enough to deem the last two letters of my tail number as Keep Spending. (N322KS). Ain't it nice to have good friends like this; nothing but consideration for me

Best,

Dave

When I did the checkout in the club's Archer N8114F, I had a bobble while talking to Quad City Approach. We were coming back to the airport after doing the air work and I got a little too fast on the radio work.

QC App: "Cherokee 8-1-1-4-Foxtrot, enter left base runway 2-7."
Me: "Left base 2-7, 8-1-1-4-Fart.... uhhhh... " [Pause while my instructor and I both try to quit chuckling] "1-4-FOXtrot."
Open Mic (apparently from Approach): [chuckling in background]

It was a slow day for Quad City Approach that day.

-Chris

 

[Laurie]

Likewise a 210 I once rode in, N**8SW, was known to one and all as "eight Scotch Whiskey."

-- Pilawt

Ahh, yes, reminds me of an old cherokee I used to rent 7WW or seven whiskey double shot.

 

[Ghery]

Summer of 1961. A friend of Dad's had a 170/172 (can't remember which, I was only 9) and took all of us up in the Sacramento area. Dad in the right seat, Mom and the two kids in the back. I got to "fly" leaning over Dad's shoulder. "Level" was only an abstract concept. Next time was commercial in 1969 (and too many times since). Only two other times in light aircraft before I started lessons in 2000 - a sightseeing flight over Acadia NP in 1978 (probably in a 172) while in the area on business and a sightseeing flight in a 172 around Puget Sound (out of OLM) that we won in an auction at church in 1999. Actually had my first few lessons in that plane the following year.

 

[Dave Krall CFII]

Dave. Did you go to Bucknell?

Yes, ...for parties!

 

[jshawley]

Back in late 50s or 60/61 my dad, an electronics tech with Boeing and assigned to Holloman AFB, worked on a friend's avionics (dunno what--I was only 8 or 9 at most). It was a Cessna 310, early model with the plain jane wing tanks.

Remember the engines, when they started, didn't sound like the ones in the war movies--y'know, that shrill whine as the big ol' radials would turn over...

Big brother was scared to death; I thought it was neat, but what do I know? He visited M17 a couple weeks ago to see the open house; says Jack scared him enough to never get into a GA plane again.

Unfortunately, Jack and his 310 made the NTSB reports a few years later . Not sure if it was driving into the side of a mountain in the snow, or possibly just losing it when communicating (by means of a flyby) with some miners in New Mex.

Sigh.

 

[Len Lanetti]

First GA flight was Nov 1979 in a Grumman AA1B operated by Hortman Aviation (now operates out of PNE) when they were at the 3M airport in Levittown PA (airport is now an industrial park but you can still make out the number on runway 01 which runs up to the PA/NJ Turnpike connector bridge). Took me about 2 weeks to become an airport bum.

Len

 

[poadeleted3]

I was 5 or 6. My Dad took me for a sightseeing trip in a Ford Tri-motor. I think we were visiting Jekyll Island that year, but can't really remember. I remember the details of that flight, though

 

[SkykingC310]

09.23.02 - We got as far as taxiing to the runway and then lightning struck near the airport so my instructor cancelled my first lesson. I was destroyed because I'd been looking forward to this for soooo long. I kinda wish he'd cancelled it before we'd even taxiied out.