Warbird Information Exchange

Sorry if this has been posted before. But I like to know how people got involved with their love of Warbird or Aviation...

Mine started early! Im told I hit my first airshow at 2 weeks of age. My Father and Grandfather (both Veterans) were involved with the CAF. I always tagged along with them going from city to city for airshows growing up. The older I got, the more I got to do...Now I have a daughter that is twelve and she started out the same why I did,...."teething on warbirds". For the last numerous years we have been deeply involved with Lone Star Flight Museum.
I also have another Grandfather who served with the 390th BG, flying on B-17s out of Framlingham England. He was a waist gunner...This also fuels the fire with my love for the 17!

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Never drive faster than your Guardian Angel can fly!!

http://www.390th.org/
www.LSFM.org

Trae

Elroy--

Interesting topic; don't think anyone has raised it lately here...

For me there were two main factors leading to what has become a lifelong interest in flying and in historic aircraft. Both began circa 1975, coincidentally. First, my dad was keenly building and flying balsa gliders and the like; he started on a rubber-band-powered Nieuport 27 WWI scout, and so as to finish it in a correct livery, borrowed some library books on World War One aviation. I became intrigued by the SPADs and Fokkers and so forth and began sketching them. Around the same time, a cousin from Thunder Bay came to live with us while he was doing an electrical engineering degree at nearby McMaster. He had recently obtained his PPL, and to keep proficient would fairly frequently rent Cherokees and such up at Mt.Hope and take various members of the family flying. That, of course, was the acme of cool. Then one day we noticed a sign that had turned up on the side of Hgr#4 at the Hope. What, we wondered, was "CWH"? A peek through a small window in a man-door revealed things like a Firefly, some Harvards and a TBM. At that point my interest moved forward one World War! I refer to that peer through the Georgian glass into Hgr#4 as "The Moment The Bug Bit"...

Cheers

Steve T

Stories of Mom's cousin KIA with the 390th over Friedrichshafen...built models...12 O'clock High & Blacksheep Squadron...first trip to OSH in '78.

Next

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It was a good idea, it just didn't work.

It all started for me at a young age as well. I went to a car show with my Dad, and was fairly interested, but a few weeks later I attended my first airshow at North Jeffco International Airport in Colorado. I immediately fell in love with aircraft, and they were much more interesting and noisy than the cars at the carshow I later learned more about my Grandfather's actions with the 96th BG during WWII piloting B-17's, and I fell in love with the aircraft the moment I saw one up close. Loved it ever since, and still can't get enough of it...Nowadays, I fly with friends as often as I can, and still try and make it out to an airshow or two when time allows...college keeps you busy! I get my warbird fix right now by building plastic models, mostly WWII American subjects...I have a P-47 on the desk right now actually! I don't think my life would be the same without a passion for something so beautiful and yet so dangerous in the B-17.

-Dennis S.
Greeley, CO

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"We must bond together and fight as brothers or we will all die as fools."

I think this was done before.
But anyway; Mine started 3 or 4 years ago when I was looking through one of my grandfathers photo albums from WWII (he was a photographer for the navy, but was in the marines ) when I saw a F4U and had too know what it was. And then I went to warbirds anonymous .

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The conquest of space is worth the risk of life. - Gus Grissom

DuPage County Airshow, Oshkosh, then the Victory Air Museum. Then I started building models. Then I went to Northrop University to get my A&P, volunteered on the Planes of Fame Flying Wing restoration, worked my way through college at Fighter Rebuilders, got my private pilots license, bought an airplane, etc.

My first visit to the Air Zoo was before I could walk, and I've been hooked ever since. I really started to get more interested when I started going to airshows in the mid-90s and saw the Cat Flight for the first time.

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Matt

I cut classes one day in college after seeing a bunch of Stearmans fly over. I went to the local airport (Reid-Hillview) and hung out for the day. The 'bunch of Stearmans' was actually the Red Baron Squadron, and I won a raffle ride with them. The rest, as they say, is history.

I'm a reincarnated Mustang pilot from WWII. I fell in love with airplanes long before the girls came along. I'll always stick with the Warbirds though.

Lynn

Various influences -

Saw "Tora! Tora! Tora!" when I was ten.

Grew up near NAS Glenview and once went on a tour of the base for my brother's birthday around '72 or '73.

First read Air Classics in '75, and realized there were still vintage aircraft moldering away, waiting to be documented and restored.

Went to Oshkosh for the first time with my uncle Tommy and my cousin Philip in '77 and got really hooked on the sights and sounds and smells of airplanes (and I really should dig up my photos from that trip...)

Started going to the Victory Air Museum in Mundelein, IL in '79 and made a lot of good friends there (blue skies to you, Earl, Ray and Paul).

And most importantly, I talked with my dad, James Brame, about his experiences in the postwar USAF in Japan, as well as my late "uncle", Bud Seglin, about his experiences as a ball turret gunner in the Pacific during the war.

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All right, Mister Dorfmann, start pullin'!
Pilot: "Flap switch works hard in down position."
Mechanic: "Flap switch checked OK. Pilot needs more P.T." - Flight report, TB-17G 42-102875 (Hobbs AAF)

Started young!!
1st airplane ride in dads C-140 out of the airstrip we lived on here in the Green Mountains. Pretend flying with my cousin in my uncles BT-13 project and a wrecked Beech Staggerwing. 1st warbird ride was in our newly restored Navy N3N-3. This was in the late 70's. Did a lot of flying just looking at the gauges move since I was too small to see out. Learned the basics by my father in my uncles 7AC champ. Later a move to florida, attended the VAC shows in Titusville in the early 80's by riding in the back of a Beech C-45. Later in yrs, got to ride in a P-51, TBM, C-47's. Always had a love for military history cause of my father. Visiting the civil war battlefields where my 3rd great granfather fought proudly. Reading his recollections that he wrote after the war, while standing in the fields he fought in. So being in aviation, warbirds just fell into place. Went to A&P school during college, only had 3 jobs ever in my working career, all have been in aviation. So now I am a mech in the struggling airline industry. A firm belief that people got them selves in a hurry. If it was my decision, we would still be flying DC-7's.
Long live round motors.

"You have not flown until you ride the wings of fabric. Here the sound of a round motor. Feel the wind and oil in your face. See the sunlight glisten off the flying wires while touching the clouds."

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Long Live the N3N-3 "The Last US Military Bi-Plane" 1940-1959
Badmouthing Stearmans on WIX since 2005

My love of airplanes started before I knew it. My mother had a bunch of crayon drawings of mine that I don't remember making as a wee boy and most were of airplanes.

My dad worked for North American in Dallas during WWII and my mom's brother flew B-24's (15th AF/465th BG/783rd Sq) They both took me to airshows as a kid and showed me "their" airplanes. My neighbor was a pilot and took me flying some. I built plastic models of all the WWII airplanes I could afford. I got to go to the CAF show in Harlingen in @ 1978 WOW that was cool!
In 1985 I went to a reunion and airshow with my uncle at Pampa, TX and they were selling rides in a TBM, a B-25 and a B-17. He offered to buy me a $50 ride in the B-25...I added an extra $25 to his offer and bought a ride in the B-17.
I found out that B-17 "Chuckie" was based near home...and started spending Saturdays at the airport with the B-17 crew. Eventually, I got to go flying some more! I got my private ticket and flew as much as I could afford. I spent the next couple of years at this until I got a woman who would put up with me and started another life, children, work...I am still a member of the Vintage Flying Museum, but don't get to spend very much time at all with the crew or the airplane...

I grew up around an AFB and fell in love with military aircraft. My grandfather, who was an AAF vet, handed down many old airplane books to us kids. One of them was Edward Joblonski's "Flying Fortress." After reading some 300+ pages about air battles in B-17s, I fell in love with the bird. Watching the 1943 Memphis Belle, Target for Today, and Combat America made me like the bird even more. I still need to hitch a ride on one soon.

I checked this book out of my Jr. high school library so many times they eventually told me NO MORE...

I own 2 copies now....hehe

Ha. I just stole mine!
(no seriously I did)

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The conquest of space is worth the risk of life. - Gus Grissom