The Sky. As long as I can remember, it’s always fascinated me. A constantly changing canvas of natural beauty, as far as the eye can see. A place reserved solely for the birds and the bold. A place that many of us living on this planet will never know.
My first memories of looking up at the sky occurred when I was about four years old. I remember seeing a jet cruising at altitude that at the time was inconceivable for a young boy. For me, the top of the stairs was a huge achievement, let alone 30,000 feet.
As I watched it move slowly across my field of vision, I was curious about the white lines that it left in its wake. My four year old brain came up with the logic that those mysterious machines were there to create clouds. Why else would they be spewing out lines of cloud as they soared through the air? I was intrigued by the fact that something built by people, who lived on the ground, could go quite so high.
Several years later around 2003, when I must have been about ten or eleven, we went on a family holiday to Cornwall. The drive seemed to take forever. These were the days before mobile internet, or even before smartphones. I had a Sagem My-X6, which had features such as a colour screen and polyphonic ringtones. My wallpaper was a picture of a plane.
We were listening to music on my mother’s iPod. The device, which was new technology at the time, had revolutionised our drives, moreso because my father had brought a device that plugged into the iPod’s headphone jack and could broadcast the music on an FM frequency at short range, meaning we would have high quality music through the car radio.
We were staying at a small cottage just outside of the small town of Camelford in the north of Cornwall. We had been driving for about an hour or so when I saw a small aircraft in the sky. I had never been on an airplane before and watched with interest. Later that day, we pulled up at a small airstrip a few miles from Lands End. My dad had seen a sign labelled “Scenic Flights” and had stopped to enquire.
Before I knew it, I was being bundled into the back of a Cessna 172 alongside my younger sister. I was given a car seat to sit on, so that I could see out of the window. The take-off was extremely scary and bumpy. Yet before I knew it, we had left the ground. I clearly remember squeezing my sister’s hand hard, yet it was not from fear, more from excitement. I was flying!
We flew around Lands End, looking down on the famous signpost. I remember seeing the patches of sea fog moving gently across the water below. I remember seeing the horizon curve as I looked out to sea. I remember feeling exhilarated, excited and lusting for more.
At that moment, I knew what I wanted to do when I was older. I wanted to fly.
Flash forward a few years. It was my thirteenth birthday and I was given a card by my Aunt and Uncle. It was a card labelled “Good for One Flying Lesson”. On top of that, I had an AFE Flying Training Guide which never left my schoolbag.
My family drove me to Coventry Airport and it was there that I tasted flight for the second time. The aircraft was an old, beaten up Reims-Cessna F150L, callsign G-GBLR.
The flight was incredible, but this time it was even better. I wasn’t just a passenger anymore. I was in the front left seat.
Matt, my instructor, was from Australia, and talked about how they used the 150’s to move around the larger ranches as the Short Take-off & Landing (STOL) capabilities combined with relatively cheap maintenance made it ideal for hopping from place to place quickly.
We flew over Draycote Water, Rugby and Northampton before turning back to Coventry Airport. I had a certificate printed, which I immediately made a copy of so I could show off at school. On top of that, I was told that unlike many people who had their initial flights, I was extraordinarily gentle on the controls, which meant a much comfier flight.
I had flown a plane, and I had been told I had a knack for it. I’ll admit, this did inflate my ego a bit, but when I was thirteen, the only thing that really mattered to me in life was to be considered “cool” by my classmates. That, and playing video games.
About a month later, I went back for another flying lesson. This time it was with a different instructor. I didn’t like him very much at all. I can’t remember his name either.
We took off towards Draycote Water and he demonstrated the effectiveness of the controls at different airspeeds before performing a stall before we returned. Although exciting, the robotic, monotonous tone of the instructor somehow made flying boring. I remember sitting in the car on the way home, having enjoyed the experience but not as much as the first time.
That would be the last time I would fly for over ten years. It wasn’t for lack of passion. I had plenty of that. It was a lack of money. Flying lessons were expensive after all, and I was thirteen years old. I would have to do a paper round for approximately eight weeks just to afford one flying lesson.
And so for a long time, my interest in flying ended up at the back of my mind, as if it was some kind of half-forgotten dream.
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