Warbird Information Exchange

neat momento, today all you get is a hard time!!

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tom d. friedman - hey!!! those fokkers were messerschmitts!! * without ammunition, the usaf would be just another flying club!!! * better to have piece of mind than piece of tail!!

Oooh, I remember my first airplane ride, it was amazing! I was 16 and I flew in a seaplane over Priest Lake, in Idaho. It was gorgeous and just so so much fun!

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"It is the greatest shot of adrenaline to be doing what you have wanted to do so badly. You almost feel like you could fly without the plane." Charles Lindbergh

My first airplane ride was a Ford Tri-Motor. It was one of the old Island Airlines ones, not sure where it is today. I was 17 I think at the time. Me and some older buddies were going to chase trains out of Jacksonville, Florida (from the old Norfolk Southern steam program). When I got to the place we were all leaving from, one of the guys said he'd seen an ad in the paper for $20 quick rides on it. Trains or a plane? Not much of a choice for any of us, as none of us had ridden in one of these before. My folks gave the green light of course, and off we went. It was the best $20 I think I ever spent in my life. I just wish I'd spent the extra $10 to ride in the co-pilot's seat! I'm sure I have the photos around here somewhere, but at this time I have no idea what ever happened to this aircraft. I tell the story all the time, along with the fact that first train I ever rode on was pulled by steam. You'd think I was 80 or something, but I'm less than 40 years old.

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Life member, 91st BG Memorial Association
Owner, 1944 Willys MB #366014
Former REMF (US Army, O3)

1968-69...I clipped a coupon from FLYING magazine, the introductory offer..$5 for the first lesson, which included a half hour flight and an endorsed log book.....Scrounged up all my lawn mowing money, and took the bus from Gladstone, Mo. to N. Kansas City, where I had to ground navigate through a rail yard full of trains, to get to Municipal Airport, or as it is called now..Down Town Airport...The instructor was really a fine person...he extended our flight to a little over an hour. He let me at the controls quite a long while...Over flew my house..didn't see my family outside, as nobody there knew what I was up to...did see my moms dachshound jumping up trying to get the laundry hanging on the clothes line....Couldn't wait to get home and show my buds that I had officially flown a Cessna 150, and had the log to prove it!

Sounds like N7584..Al Chaney bought her around 1980, and barnstormed around the country for several years, with the aircraft still in her Island Airlines markings. The aircraft is now owned by Kermit Weeks. She was severely damaged in a hangar collapse during Hurricane Andrew, and is under long-term restoration by Maurice Hovious in Vicksburg, Michigan (about a half-hour up the road from me.) Mr. Hovious specializes in Ford Tri-Motors, having restored them for the Kalamazoo Air Zoo, the EAA, and Greg Herrick.

Here are some pictures of Mr. Hovious's shop in 2005, with N7584's fuselage in a jig: http://www.putinbayphotos.com/trimtr04/trimtr04.htm


Cheers!

Steve

my first airplane ride was somewhat special - I attended a parachute training course when I was 17.... so I took to the air aboard an aircraft (Pilatus PC-6 Turbo Porter) but jumped out of it.....

on my 18th birthday I had my first warbird ride, in a Junkers Ju-52 (ex-Swiss AF)..... i.e. the first flight for me that included take-off and landing...

Martin

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Flying is easy: just learn how to throw yourself at the ground and miss

September 1959 - A pleasure flight from a temporary strip at Ramsgate.
A retired RAF Prentice G-APIY/VR249...by some definitions a Warbird. It amuses me immensely that it is now an exhibit at Newark Air Museum.

Looking at my passenger log, that I still maintain, I see the next five flights were - Tiger Moth, Viscount, Auster, S55 Whirlwind...and Spitfire.

PeterA

Other than an unremarkable jet airliner ride when I was 3 (DC-8 or 707) from Chicago to Los Angeles with my dad, my first "real" piston engined flight (maybe 1974?) was in Chuck LeMaster's Ford Tri-Motor at Oshkosh.

Seems like a lot of folks had their first recreational flight in those barnstorming Tri-Motors!

First one? I was 7 or 8, carried by the old Eastern Air Lines to Orlando from Providence............all flying done by commercial carriers until I was 34, at which point I went for my first SNJ-6 flight! That, my friends, was the start of the sweetest time of my life! 4 different SNJ-6s and a Bell 47G logged, a T-6G and a Bell 47 turbine (not logged), and a quick hop around the pattern a few times in a B-25...............Dang, I loved my job!

i already posted my 1st flight experience, but i remembered my most unusual....... on a trip to mexico in 1973 to spend a month with a friend who lives their, after he spent a month with me, we flew to mexico city via mexicana airlines via boeing 727. my friend & i were both 13 then. we were invited up to the flight deck & got to stay up their for the remainder of the flight, including the landing!! man those were the days!! unheard of anymore.

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tom d. friedman - hey!!! those fokkers were messerschmitts!! * without ammunition, the usaf would be just another flying club!!! * better to have piece of mind than piece of tail!!

I don't remember my first flight (cross country) as I was a week and a half old. My next flight was in July 1971 again cross country, that included a Chicago to San Francisco flight aboard a American Airlines 747. Having family on the west coast meant I flew several times cross country in the 70s and 80s.

My first non-airliner flight was in a Cessna 172 in the mid 70s. I was a Cub Scout and one of the fathers owned the plane and took the troop up for quick flights.

BK

Yep, that's it all right. I recalled the number as soon I read your post! Thanks for the info!

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Life member, 91st BG Memorial Association
Owner, 1944 Willys MB #366014
Former REMF (US Army, O3)

No proplem..as you can imagine, that bird is kinda special to me.

SN

<EDIT> Hmmm...that's an interesting typo..a Fruedian slip, maybe?