When did you first become interested in Warbirds?

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Well to start with it was just aircraft, living close to Cranfield Airfield and occasionally getting the Vintage Aircraft Team fly over. Then i went to my first show there in 1987. Despite the Tornado and even Concorde turning up the two things that stuck in my mind were the Harvard Formation Team and the Vulcan. My next show turned out to be in 1992 at Shuttleworth. The rest is history......... 8) 8) 8)
 
When did I start. The earliest I can remember is having a childs book on aircraft, the type that had a picture of the plane its speed and the engines. I noticed that one of the slower ones had two engines and the faster plane one. I asked my Dad why and he didn't know. A number of my toys were metal aircraft. This was before we moved from Liverpool so I must have been six at the time.
I did a lot of Wargames from about nine years old and the ones I like most were aviation or Naval wargames. When I was 14 with an older member of the wargames club we wrote a set of WW2 Naval rules. Everything grew from there.
 
I remember getting interested in warbirds when I was growing up in Minnesota (in the 1960's), under the flight path of one of the main runways at Mpls/St Paul airport.

There was a USAF/USN joint reserve airbase there, and I would watch C-119's and PV-2's taking off and coming in to land.

One day I bought a PBY Catalina model ( I think it was when Revell still made thhose fine 1/32 scale models) and my next door neighbor told me he was a pilot of one of them in the Pacific during WW2. I thought that was so cool, especially when he told me he was still a pilot in the Naval Reserve and would on occasion fly one of those PV2's over our neighborhood.
 
For me it was being around Aviation my whole life. My dad flew Hueys and he would take me work with him and from then one I knew I wanted to fly and be around aviation. I started studying planes and then with my love of WW2 history naturally it carried over to Warbirds. I remember being 5 and my dad taking me to museums over here in Germany with the Luftwaffe aircraft and me touching the wing of the Bf-109G-6 and going "WOW!"
 
I think I became interested in aviation as kind of a genetic defect through my Dad who was one of the first 6 fitter riggers used in the BCATP and because of him always look up at the sound of any aircraft though i tend not to look at helicopters as they are little to prevalent around here unless they have that heavy military sound my first airshow i saw the Golden Hawks with the Canadair F86 Sabres
 
the lancaster kicks ass said:
is that why you like the -109 so much?

That has part to do with it, being it was the first WW2 aircraft that I ever saw. Mostly though because I like the design of it. I like the way it was shaped and the Luftwaffe camo on it.
 
fair enough, the main reason i like the lanc is because i saw a documentary on it when i used to think planes were cool but didn't know anything about them, if it was a B-17 documentary i proberly would've like the B-17 like i like the lanc ;)
 

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