PPL at Wycombe Air Centre in 1976 age 21, now 61. Completed within 6 months and at a cost of £850ish. Those were the days!
My first light aircraft flight was in this Airtourer, at age eight…. This photo I found on line and it was taken a year of so before my first flight, when the plane was brand new. Amazing what you can find on line…
I started flying myself at age 15 in my dad’s C150 and used to ride a 125 cc motorcycle to the airport, legally, to fly for 30 minutes unsupervised on my student license. Then I rode home again on the motorcycle. Today I’m a big believer is starting kids with machinery early. I soloed on my 16th birthday, but quit after a while. Too many things were happening and I just didn’t have the interest in flying as a teenager. I couldn’t do anything with it other than fly around the airport – I had no money. But then at age 38 I bought my own plane and restarted. The early flying paid off because flying had always remained in the back of my mind, and now I had money. At age 46 I bought another plane, which is mostly what I fly now at a somewhat older age 
That’s amazing Silvaire….my first flight was in a Victa Airtourer that landed on our farm in Western Australia when I was about 10 years old! The pilot just randomly decided to put it down on our place….I was hooked thereafter…
Completed within 6 months and at a cost of £850ish. Those were the days!
I did my GPL and 1st PPL for 0. In ex-YU you could do any activity for free – flying, sky-diving, scuba-diving or playing football. Those were the days
AnthonyQ wrote:
That’s amazing Silvaire….my first flight was in a Victa Airtourer that landed on our farm in Western Australia when I was about 10 years old! The pilot just randomly decided to put it down on our place….I was hooked thereafter…
‘Mine’ now flies in Australia on VH registration, having been crunched at some point and then shipped down under to be rebuilt and fly again.
First GA flight 37 with a relative, PPL 41, tailwheel 42 and had a nice shortish flight in a supercub a couple of hours ago and still smiling. 43 now.
Sat in a C172 when I was 5 but my parents wouldn’t let me ride in my friends dads plane from Palo Alto to Lake Tahoe. At 6, sat in a 747 jumpseat (those were the days!) for about 2 hours from NY to Paris on TWA before the pilots remembered I was there (I stayed quiet hoping they would let me stay until we landed…). Discovered I had poor eyesight at 8 or 9 which destroyed my dreams of becoming a pilot. Now, “notwithstanding” a 4 and 7 year old and a time consuming job, managing to fly – but my 2016 resolution is to, for lack of a better expression, “commit” to flying more, i.e. Beat the time challenge and just make it happen.
Very interesting responses to this thread.
Me, with 10 in front of the Scheibe SF23 “Sperling” (Sparrow) my father had found in a barn and restored to new condition … 40 years later i accidentally discovered that the plane still existed 40 flight minutes away. It was in pretty sad condition,, but is still flying. Flew there and repeated the picture ;-)
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Cool pictures Alexis !
Thanks Michael ;-)
