Became interested in flying during my teenager years. I would go on my bike to the nearest GA airport (Hilversum, EHHV) and look at the airplanes landing.
Started flying only 5 years ago at the age of 46. A friend of mine arranged with me for a business lunch meeting at the airport restaurant of Terlet near my home town. The place is known with glider flyers (Terlet) and they had a few TMGs there as well. After our lunch he asked if I would maybe wanted to fly and then arranged a first flying lesson in one of those TMGs. That ignited the spark and got me flying.
From the start I wanted to do more than hang around the glider airfield and adventure out into the world. So, instead of getting my recreational pilot license (RPL) I opted for the unusual (to the people at the glider field) and went straight for a PPL to start with. I still remember my first solo flights in a Rotax Falke aircraft. What an adventure and feel of freedom! Now, a few years later I have added an Instrument Rating, Multi-Engine/IR and almost a SET class rating and have flown close to 1500 hours and seen Europe, Africa and the Middle East from above. The flying definitely changed my life and that of our family.
I feel privileged to be able to easily combine flying with work and family stuff and look forward to my next trip this weekend to Lyon (for the Opera) and Courchevel after that for some days of skiing with our son Hugo, my brother Harmen and a good friend. Again, I just feel privileged to be able to fly and experience that freedom. To me, GA flying feels a little like a time-machine. You get in the aircraft and after flying a bit you get out in another world.
SPL 23
PPL 24
IR 27
Stopped flying 36
Renewed PPL 53
Renewed IR 54
Currently 56
PPL(A) 34
CPL/IR/MEP/ATPL(expired) 47.
PPL (H) 53
FI 55
Now 58
All EASA
ATPL theory was not that much more than CPL theory and did it out of pure interest.
Started at 39
IR at 43 and CPL at 44 (EASA)
49 now
16/46
Now 64 / Then 41
Started in 1997, at 24 at the Bay Area Aero Club in Houston, TX. Got my PPL three months after starting in C172 N1219F
Complex signoff in the club’s Arrow (N9301N) sometime in 1998. Tailwheel signoff in the club’s C170 N23AD in 1999, and bought a half share in a Cessna 140 NC140LB that year with one of the line guys at Houston Gulf Airport. (That line guy is now an airline pilot for Skywest).
FAA IR in 1999, plus high performance signoff in the club’s S35 Bonanza N8945U, FAA glider rating in 2000 (with the Soaring Club of Houston), multiengine in 2001 in a Piper Apache (with the Geronimo conversion). I actually really liked the Apache. While billed as a “good timebuilder” (euphemism for slow) it felt like flying a big twin engined TriPacer.
Moved to the Isle of Man during TT week 2002. Got checked out in Manx Flyers C172 and did a bit of flying in that, also AMP (Association of Manx Pilots) had a Grumman Cheetah which I flew every so often (till the treasurer and chairman of AMP crashed it – no injuries, but the aircraft was properly wrecked), and towed gliders in the Auster J1 I have now for a good two years before I had a financial interest in the plane! The Auster is pretty much all I fly right now and I love that plane.
Sadly my former home airport KSPX (Houston Gulf, formerly Spaceland due to its proximity to the Johnson Space Center) is gone now – just ticky tacky identikit McMansion houses. It was a bit of an odd airport, it was privately owned and had zero subsidies, but still turned a profit despite not charging landing fees and having parking/hangar fees/fuel charges in line with the surrounding area. It was owned by someone related to Osama Bin Laden and after the Sept.11 attacks, the airport received lots of unwelcome attention. I think it would have eventually wound up being sold for houses eventually, but this I think certainly hastened its demise as I think the owner sold it cheap to unload it and get rid of a source of unwelcome attention.
Also sadly, N1219F, the C172 which I did my PPL checkride and IR checkride in is also no longer with us, during a hurricane the hangar it was in collapsed. It was a 1979 C172N and a real workhorse – it often flew 100 or more a month. It looked a bit rough when I did my PPL in it (still on its original paint and interior) but it flew very well and was a solid reliable airframe, and had been in the club since the early 1980s. The owner got it repainted and the interior redone only about 2 years before it met its end.
Well I didn’t meant his to turn into a story about airports and planes I liked, but there you go!
I can’t help but to associate the question with this: 
Current: 49
PPL: 24
IR: 26
MEPL/IR: 27
50/21
