How did you get into Aviation?

[SaparotRob]

When in the third grade, my teacher "corrected" my book report on The Sinking of the Bismarck. She told the class that airplanes do not carry torpedoes.

 

[GrauGeist]

I and my fellow "aerodynamicists" had evasive maneuvers as part of our research.

Take a "Whistling Pete" firework, pull the base off and then pull the outer cardboard wrapper off.
Set it on the ground and light it and stand back.

What happens next will both delight and terrify: it'll fly all over the place, chase you and anyone else, all while shrieking and emitting that classic red flame.

 

[special ed]

Using aviation knowledge and model building experience, a fellow aviation nut in Jr. High tormented some bullies playing basketball under the light on his street.
We used "strike anywhere" (old school) kitchen matches as fuselage with a firecracker taped on the match, fuse leading to match head, with thin card board wings and stabilizer, fins bent up at the ends, glued on, to make BAKA bombs. When thrown with vigor, the trajectory is about 1/2 block. nose diving into the enemy. Match lights, fuse burns, go bang, no evidence.
Great fun in 1955!

 

[Barrett]

For many of us, sort of like asking a fish how it got interested in swimming!
There were "crop dusters" overhead much of the time, and my mother's family owned the local airstrip. Dad had trained as a WW II pilot, and I started flying (officially) at 16.
I was muchly blessed.

 

[DrumBob]

I just gravitated to aviation naturally from an early age. I have no solid explanation for it, but I think I know why, and it's not something I'll discuss here.

 

[GreenKnight121]

My early childhood was in the hills above a railroad town, and I was all about trains. When I was 11 we moved to our state's capital town, which had an airport 4 miles away, and my fickle fancy fixed on flying. It stayed there until I retired from my second career, and now I'm playing with trains again.
I really got into flying when I graduated boot camp and got sent to avionics school at a Naval Air Station that had a flying club. $12/hr for a Cessna 150 (wet) and $4/hr for an instructor, what's not to like? By the time I got out of the Nav I had 450 hours, Commercial, Multi Engine, and most of my Instrument and CFI completed. When I had to give up flying (medical) 20 years later, the logs totalled 13,000 hours.

My Father was a railroad police officer... but my first 5 years of life we lived below the flight path of a USAF base in western Nevada (the school on base also served the local civilian community, my oldest brother started elementary school there).

One of my few clear memories of that period was hearing sonic booms and watching contrails overhead.

NAS Millington, Tennessee, right?
My avionics schools were there Sept. 1981-Oct. 1982.

 

[k2keller]

I was born in Colorado Springs with Ent AFB and NORAD in town and the Air Force Academy just down the road. My grandfather was a retired aircraft mechanic with the Army Air Corps (26th Pursuit Squadron). We used to shop at the BX all the time. My dad had a restaurant across the street from Ent AFB and a lot of officers would come in for lunch. For some reason, my model making gravitated towards airplanes, and what airplanes were cooler than WW2 military aircraft?
When I was a teenager, I joined the Civil Air Patrol. A local FBO had a deal with the CAP and I could fly for $9.50 an hour, wet. Soloed and got my single engine ticket when I was 17, again with the help of the CAP. My first job out of high school was working as a line boy at that same FBO at Boeing Field. Got to fuel the occasional P51. Failed the entrance physical for the Air Force Academy, and soon became a paramedic. I got to do a fair amount of search and rescue in helicopters over the years.