Flight/Planes

TonyM said:
My first flight

I'm fifteen years old and had never been on a plane but had a passion for aviation living under the flight path for Glasgow airport all my life. As my mother never tired of telling people that I had ideas above my station one of those was to learn how to fly. We were poor so little money around even for food at times, I worked a paper round and washed taxis and saved everything I could.

Seeing all these planes overhead inevitably led to me becoming a plane spotter (sad I know), and whenever I could I walk to the airport and hang around the lounge with guys with the same passion. This was about a twenty mile round trip.

Hanging around the airport I wandered over to the flying club one day and was welcomed in and chatted with instructors and members and even got to sit in the cockpit of a Cessna 150, I didn't sleep that night I was so excited by the experience and now I was determined to experience flight. I saved until I had enough for a flight and walked to the airport the anticipation electric as I got to the club. I helped the instructor get the plane out of the hangar and that was a thrill in itself but...

The weather was closing in and the instructor cancelled the flight, the disappointment I can't describe but every pilot quickly learns about weather. A couple of weeks go by and I get to the airport for another attempt and I hook up with the CFI (chief flying instructor), and he's saying weather looks marginal I'm not sure about this, you've never flown before and you might not like the potential turbulence. I didn't say anything but he obviously saw the look of disappointment on my face and said 'ok, let's give it a go we can always turn back early'.

I learned how to pre-flight the plane, got in the left seat, started the engine and worked through the checklist with him. This wasn't an air experience flight it was treated as lesson one of the syllabus so I taxied out to the holding point of the runway passing airliners and one thing I won't forget, as I taxied past a biz jet the pilots gave the wee boy in the plane a wave which I returned. So we get clearance to the runway and line up. Words I was to hear many times from my instructor 'follow me through' which means hands and feet lightly on the controls so I can get a feel for the movements and he asked me to take charge of the throttle, what? Yup you's gonna fly this plane!

Talking me through this we barrel down the runway and in no time we're airborne, I'm in awe as the ground drops away and in short order we level off at a thousand feet just below the cloud base as it's totally overcast. He hands me full control as I now fly the plane striving to maintain the same altitude in the chop which didn't bother me at all, learning to trim the plane and learn the basics of the instruments. Now know this, the local area has spectacular scenery and seeing this for the first time breathtaking despite the really crappy grey weather but eventually we have to go home.

I roughly know where I am but how do we find the airport? CFI is giving me a heading but it's all looking murky out there and as we get closer there it is, the airport has turned the runway lights to max and that was a glorious sight the only colour out there. I followed through on the landing and taxied back to the club, did a debrief and made my first entry in my log book. To say I was hooked on flying is an understatement. The plane I flew was a Cessna 150 registration G-AWPP which you can look up on Google for pics and an accident report (I didn't break it).

First flight at fifteen at seventeen I was crewing military fast jets.
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Were you a real, genuine UK plane spotter....did you wear a blue anorak?
 
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TonyM said:
Yup, I had a green anorak which was the only choice in those days :)
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I always used to get a chuckle out of the photos in "FlyPast" and the Air Britain publications of blue anoraked spotters.

Do you remember back in the late 90s when a dozen Brit plane spotters were arrested for espionage in Greece for taking unauthorized photos at an airbase? I was in the UK at the time, and it was a huge news story.
 
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I remember that very well! I thought those folks were idiots taking pics of military planes in a foreign country, that can be done but don't hang around an airfield fence.

On a road trip around France I parked in a lay by beside Toulouse-Blagnac airport which is the home of Airbus. Around 2am I'm woken by a dozen gendarmes carrying machine guns asking me what I'm doing there. My French is ok so it got sorted but don't even hang around a civvie airfield.
 
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When I was at Fort Knox we would go down to the Airfield and watch the tanks load up and unload. Fun stuff.
However going past the depository had lots of rules. No stopping if you are in a vehicle or on foot. No cameras.
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Fort-Knox-Bullion-Depository-F.jpg
 
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Paintman said:
When I was at Fort Knox we would go down to the Airfield and watch the tanks load up and unload. Fun stuff.
However going past the depository had lots of rules. No stopping if you are in a vehicle or on foot. No cameras.
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View attachment 18995
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There are frequently cars parked across the road from the end of the runway at WPAFB, people with binoculars and cameras watching aircraft takeoff/land. As long as they are on public property across the road, I don't think they are bothered unless they are impeding traffic.

Back maybe twenty-five years ago, there was an elderly gentleman who got tired of the low flying aircraft from WPAFB buzzing his house. He built a potato catapult that he used to "shoot" at the planes. I think he hit one, which I think is how he got found out. If I can find the news story anywhere on line, I'll post a link.
 
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