Ben Miller
Airplane
Ever since I was born, I dreamed of flying. One of my favorite books as a kid was about a pair of brothers who were so bored at home that they built an airplane out of pieces of their house and flew it around town until their parents made them come back down and put the parts back where they came from. As a kid, this inspired me to try and make my own airplane to fly around in. While it wasn’t nearly as big, and didn’t fly, my little cardboard box with wings allowed my imagination to run wild.
Less than a month after I built my pretend aircraft, my dad bought me a book at the local book store. The book was titled Fighter Planes of WWII and it blew my mind. I treated this book as if it were holy, and I just about memorized every line of it. I learned how decades ago brave pilots would go up in these amazing machines to fight for their country. This book made my obsession with aircraft even bigger and introduced me to another topic that took my interest, World War 2, the golden age of aircraft technological advancement. From Bi-Planes to Jet Fighters, I was amazed.
For my eighth birthday, my grandmother took me to the local airport to take me on an “Eagle Flight” which was going to be my first time on an airplane. On EAA’s website they say “EAA’s Eagle Flights® is a free introductory flight experience and informal mentoring program designed to welcome and encourage adults who want to discover flying, but don’t know how or where to take that first step. It begins with a hands-on introduction, where you’ll fly with a local EAA-member pilot who will let you follow along at the controls of the airplane to get a feel for what being a pilot is all about. ” This was my first time ever in an airplane and I was very nervous. When I sat inside the plane, a Beechcraft Bonanza, I looked around at all the controls, switches, and instruments and wondered how one person could ever keep track of all this stuff. The excitement was building fast, and I couldn’t wait to get into the air and experience flight for the first time. The pilot began explaining to me what we would be doing during the flight and all the safety procedures we had to follow while flying. Then we began the preflight check before takeoff: he showed me the list of parts and gauges he had to check before he would be allowed to fly and even let me help with the preflight check. I got to see all the internals and even learn a bit about how certain parts worked. Once everything had been checked, we both got inside again, and he started up the engine after yelling “CLEAR PROP” out the window to warn any nearby people to get out of the way of the propeller. The engine roared loudly and we both put on our headsets to be able to hear each other over the sound. As we began taxiing to the runway, he explained that due to the torque of the propeller, the airplane would lean slightly to the left during takeoff, and that he would use the rudder to cancel out the push in that direction.
As we lined up with the white strips on the runway, the pilot pushed the throttle forward to give the engine more power. We began to gather speed quickly, and the aircraft started to shake a bit as it traveled down the runway. At around 60-70 knots, he pulled the control column black and our nose began to lift, quickly followed by the rest of the airplane. As we lifted into the sky, I felt the most amazing feeling in my life: ascending away from the ground, I felt so free and so amazed at the beauty of flight.
Most of the flight was a blur. I was so excited throughout it that I had a permanent smile plastered to my face. We flew for around 40 minutes doing maneuvers and having the pilot show me what the different buttons and switches in the cockpit did. When we landed, I got to have my picture taken with the pilot and the aircraft. From that moment on, I was basically obsessed with airplanes- it was all I would talk about.
It has been about nine years since my first flight, and now I'm learning to become a pilot seriously, flying with an instructor in Penn Yan at least once a month since August of 2016, flying in a Cessna 150. My end goal for my career is to join the Air Force and fly for my country, and every hour spent training brings me closer to my dream. Every time I look back on how it all started, I get more and more inspired to finally achieve what I have always wanted. Aviation is and almost always has been a part of my life, and I intend to keep it that way for a long time.
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