Recreational Flying

I came into recreational flying rather late in life as the fulfillment of a boyhood dream. My Father made his living building and servicing military aircraft. When I was a boy of 11 and he was stationed in Warner Robins, Georgia, he would often come home with pictures of the test pilots with whom he worked and would regale us with their antics. (Often, I would see the latter first hand, as the flyboys would buzz areas in town, shattering windows - much to the chagrin of their commanding officers. :) Pilots, or so it seemed to me in my youth, were a breed apart.

Problem was, I was not exactly a fearless flyer, experiencing white knuckles on many of the commerical flights I had to take as part of my work. Reflecting on my problem, I concluded that most of my fears stemmed from not knowing what was going on behind the locked doors to the cockpit. I decided that the only way to overcome my anxieties was to climb into the cockpit myself and learn what it takes to control the machine. At the tender age of 42, I began lessons and got my ticket nine months later.

Ten years later I haven't broken any windows, but thankfully I haven't broken any airplanes, either. I make no pretensions, being primarily a CAVU pilot (ceiling and visibility unlimited) who putt- putts around in Cessna 152's or 172's. My sister owns a 152 and is generous in making it available to me. But I find it enormously rewarding to climb to 3500' on a clear day and look out one side of the cockpit to the Appalachians and out the other to the Atlantic. My enthusiasm for the sport seems to be infectious, as I have induced several friends to take up flying. When not actually flying, I enjoy reading about the sport, my favorite flying mag being The Southern Aviator.

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