What or who was your inspiration?

[Select Zone Five]

It occured to me yesterday that I am (as far as I know) the first pilot in my family. I don't really remember when I first became interested in flying but I certainly cannot remember a time when I haven't been.

It's well known that many pilots/wannabes are sometimes inspired by their father's being a pilot (professional or private). My father is not a pilot and has never wanted to be.

Were you inspired by a family member or close friend, or did the desire come from elsewhere?

[Keef]

In my case, I think it must have been reading Biggles and WW2 flying books in my very early years. I've always wanted to fly, and thought I couldn't until the realisation, around 1971, that I could afford to (just).

As far as I know, I'm the first pilot in the family. Look like being the last - daughters lost interest after one trip to Le Touq and one over their houses. By the time the grandkids are old enough (they *are* keen on flying), I fear private flying will have gone the way of the dodo.

[AerBabe]

No inspiration, just thought it looked fun, so had a go.
Dad is interested in aircraft, but not to the point of obsession...

[Andy_R]

Since the first time I set foot upon a 747 and sat gazing out the window at the rapidly diminishing landscape below I have had nothing but a total fascination with flying. My first trial lesson some years later confirmed flying was something that gave me the highest of highs.
As above it was sometime before I had the funds to start lessons for real and each one proved the incentive to keep scrimping for the next.

[Shaggy Sheep Driver]

Can't remember where the original spark came from. I've always been mad about aeroplanes and flying, and a flight from Ringway (now Manchester International) in the 50s when I was a kid lit a fuse; I sat behind the pilot and saw that he could tilt the world by moving the stick. "I'd love to do that, one day"', I thought. But hey, private flying is only for the rich, isn't it?

So I went gliding at Derby & Lancs Camphill club and got a lot of tractor and paintbrush time, and not much air time. Then I read Richard Bach's wonderfully inspirational 'A Gift of Wings' and realised it was possible. A workmate took me for a flight from Barton in 1978 - and I joined the Lancs Aero Club there straight away (no need for a trial lesson - I knew I was going to do it).

By early 1979 I had my PPL and a share in Chipmunk G-BCSL.

Best thing I ever did. That Dick Bach fellow must have got more people flying than anyone else.

I have a personal score of 5 - folks I've taken flying who then became PPLs - and they are all still active.

SSD

[TheKentishFledgling]

I spose it was FlightSims that got me initially interested, then I was lucky enough to be given a light a/c flight, and I was hooked.

My grandad always wanted to fly, and his brother was an RAF pilot, so I suppose there's aviation "in the blood". Also, my Dad's cousin flies balloons.

Dad's never been overly keen, but loves watching and I think would love a go. Like AerBabe said though, not to the point of obsession!

tKF

[Miss Bigglesworth]

Got my inspiration through my Dad who, although not a pilot, has worked in the industry for all his working life. I was very lucky as a kid to have a few stints on real flight sims, hang around at airports a lot, travel a fair bit, and was (and still am) completely mesmerised at how a jumbo can get off the ground.

[Whirlybird]

Family? No chance. My family thought life was supposed to be safe, mundane...and totally boring. Nothing I ever did, including flying, had anything to do with them. In fact, the only thing my family ever influenced me to do was escape from being anything like the rest of them.

Friends? Nah, never knew anyone who flew. Not sure where I got the idea, except if anything was new and exciting, then I always wanted to try it - to the never-ending despair and lack of understanding of my family. And I lived near Biggin Hill as a kid. And my earliest memory is of being taken on an airline flight to Holland - as a two year old.

But these are rationalisations; I just decided, out of nowhere, that I wanted to fly. So I did. Who needs outside influences anyway?

[Cusco]

Undoubtedly my late Dad was my inspiration: He was a WW2 nav in bombing raids over Germany but getting him to tell his eager son about it all was nigh on impossible. (I still treasure his red-eyed caterpillar badge).

Lived in Cambridge in early 50s and remember Spitfires and Hurricanes & Mosquitos over head , followed shortly by Meteors and Canberras from Bassingbourn, Waterbeach and Oakington.

Read every Biggles book in the local library and walked about all the time staring skywards.

I built model aircraft, joined the RAF section in the cadet force, applied to Hamble to train for BEA.

First experience of flight was being twanged up and down the school playing field in a Grasshopper :bunjee powered by moaning fifth formers. (The actual grasshopper they tell me is now at Shuttleworth Collection)

Did the BGA gliding A & B certs annnd solo ed age 16 and then it all went t*ts up when a well meaning biology master persuaded my parents that an alterantive career was for me.

Fast forward to 10 years ago when my second inspiration (my son) got a RAF flying scholarship, and his PPL and took the whole family up from Wellesbourne age 17.

Makes me shudder to think about it now.

I just felt 'I gotta have some of this' so did PPL 10 years ago age nearly 50!.


Now have a share in A/c , cracked 400 hrs this year and go on a diet, avoid the booze and take exercise and quietly cr*p myself for the three weeks before my annual medical.

I just don't know what I'd do if I had to stop flying now.

well- you asked!

Safe flying

[The Inspector]

I read Neil Williams book 'Airborne' which my father bought me for my 14th Birthday. Never looked back really..

Learnt to fly as soon as I left school and got a job, and 3000hrs later I still like to fly VFR, rolling and swooping around the clouds on a sunny day and just FLY for flying's sake!

I've tried virtually everything that can be done with an aeroplane legally (and some marginally legal!), but still I enjoy just getting airborne, flying around, looking at the countryside and just enjoying it.

[SuperOwl]

I think the inspiration could have come from when I was a mere child living on top of one of the many hills in Sheffield (above the smog of course). On a clear day you could see the jets flying by and using my dads telescope I would follow the vapour trails and catch up with the jets. Believe me, this was the best way to actually see how fast they moved through the air. I don't know why I would find this interesting when I was 8. My passion then and still is the mighty Sheffield Wednesday (who are having a bit of a bad run at the moment).

Like Aerbabes dad my own dad is interested in planes, albeit not that much. BUT...he is far more interested in jet engines! Having said that, he works at a company that produces the fan blades for turbine engines. As a metallurgist he is in charge of producing the alloys that are used for them. He can bore me to tears talking about the "Stress that stator vanes suffer" and other stuff like that. But he's my dad...

As for friends, all mine think its hilarious that I am learning to fly. So no inspiration there.

I don't know where the inspiration has come from, perhaps it was already there to begin with. Who knows?.:)

[EI_Sparks]

Dad was a low-time PPL pilot when I was a kiddie (he got his ppl just after I was born) so my first memories are of farranfore airport in kerry. Odd thing was though, that I didn't really have this urge to go flying because of that - it was completely normal to me as a kid (I guess I thought everyone flew and I just wasn't there when they were flying :D) I always assumed that I'd learn myself as soon as I was older - in sort of the same way that you assume sunrise will be followed by sunset.

The things that made me want to learn myself were a combination of moving across the country and dad having to stop flying (college got in the way, and then work); and an old, battered paperback copy of "A gift of wings", which I still count as my most precious book, despite its tattered cover and missing pages, and which still lies beside my bed at night. :)

[SteveQB]

A bit like SZF I can’t remember not wanting to fly. It might have started age 4 when my family moved to the Middle East. I remember having a little BA logbook that you could get a hostess to take up to the captain and get signed with the mileage you did etc. Lots of flights on initially VC 10s and then Tri Stars. I remember going up to the cockpit one night flight to the UK while we were over Iraq or somewhere like that and the pilots pointing out a thunderstorm over 100 miles away, you could see all the lightning flashes at once, spectacular. I wrote into Jim’ll fix it and asked to go in the cockpit “to help fly the plane” all the way to Abu Dhabi, I always tried to do school projects on planes or jet engines. I also read the book on the BBC series about joining the RAF (was it Reach for the Sky? I know that is also the title of Douglas Baders autobiography, which I also read)

When I was 18 I applied to BA on their cadet scheme, but was rejected. I then gave up the dream for a while, but in 1997 when I was 27 (the age limit is 28) they were recruiting again and as I was fed up with my job in the city I had a long chat with the BA personnel department about it. I decided not to apply because I had recently married and the course was 18 months residential at £30 a week, and I wasn’t prepared to do that. I still wonder whether it was the right decision, yes I earn a lot more, but is doing what you have wanted to do all your life more important…..

Now we are sufficiently well off that my wife persuaded me over the summer that I should get my PPL, she put aside £6k of a bonus she got and said “there you go, you can learn to fly now” – how could I refuse?! I would love to do a CPL, but having looked over the wannabe forum realise that I could well be wasting the money. So my only hope is to win the lottery, then I would definitely teach myself to fly a 737 and do a Bruce Dickinson. Anyone know next weeks numbers?

Cheers

Steve

[incubus]

I was a RAF brat (my father was an air traffic controller / golf shop manager) so I lived and breathed fast jets until dad demobbed when I was 16.
Just took it from there. Wanted to be a fighter pilot but it never really happened. First light a/c flight was on a RAF Flying Scholarship. 16 years later I got a PPL.

[spittingimage]

At the age of 13, or so, as we climbed away from Birmingham airport in a BEA DC3, bound for a family holiday in Guernsey I was utterly captivated by the experience. So I suppose I have my parents to thank for that.

When I later asked my parents if I could possibly become an airline pilot, my father was dismissive : 'aerial bus drivers', he said. My mother was more practical : 'no, because you wear glasses', so flying was obviously completely out of the question !

I was brought up in an age when you did not question your parents' wisdom and consequently it was some 30+ years more before I got the licence to become an aerial bus driver !

[phugoid]

From an early age I have been interested in aviation. My father worked at British Aerospace at Bristol and used to take me to see the pre-production Concorde including a trip on the simulator.

Since then I have enjoyed flying in a variety of aircraft whilst in the Air Training Corps, and subsequently joined the RAF as an aircraft technician. I have enjoyed getting airborne as often as the opportunity arises and have flown in DH Chipmunks to Tornado F3s.

Only earlier this year at the age of 34 did I begin to take PPL lessons and I am thoroughly enjoying the experience!