I can't blame it all on him @Holly Saunders as I never really had any interest in riding on a plane before that either. But after that I did develop a fear of planes and with what's happening today with planes even if I didn't have the fear I would still not want to use a plane as my means of getting from A to B.
I like flying and really have no preference in regards to landing or taking off. If I had to choose I like the landing when it's really speeding down the runway....it fulfills my need for speed. I hate the airport part...such a hassle.
@Holly Saunders In John Ross' excellent novel, "Unintended Consequences", the main character, Henry Bowman, as a young man finishing college, flew groups of fellow students as a part of a Geology course, studying the topography below. Showing off once, he executed some maneuvers which produced in one young woman, some most unexpected feelings in her lower abdomen.......she was amazed, and later, in private, described them to him. He grinned broadly, telling her how attracted he was to her, and had hoped for some such happening! They went on to become very close....... Interesting type of "come-on"! Frank
Oh you don't like all the people watching? I do. Sacramento is my closest airport and it's very convenient. If you get to the bay area it is a hassle. It's fun to watch airplane videos on YouTube also. I watched one landing into San Francisco because the two times I flew into SF it was dark.
@Kitty Carmel S.F. Airport: Not too long after Boeing introduced it's huge, new, and innovative 747 Jetliner, one of them, taking off from S. F. Airport, had 8 tires blow out! That's 8 out of 16 left to land it on. The pilot radioed the emergency, flew out over the ocean, where he dumped much of the fuel load and returned to S.F., landing safely. Tried recounting this story by search, but could not, to compare my recall of it. Some sources claim 747 had no fuel-dumping capability; I tell it as I remember it being made public. Such a mind-boggling occurrence is hardly forgettable. Frank
If I could just buy a ticket and get on a plane like we could thirty years ago, I'd enjoy flying. I am not at all afraid to fly, but the airport check-in thing, the overselling of tickets, and that whole hectic mess has been enough to keep me away from flying. I haven't flown since 2001.
@Ken Anderson But, but........as Vice President Dick Cheney slyly pointed out, after the Patriot Act nearly shackled us all, "There have been no further Acts of Terror committed". For every Security Checkpoint added, every added camera watching everyday folks' normal efforts, every further commonly-accepted freedom lost, the terrorist mind will continue to scheme out ways to thwart such efforts. Personally, I would rather face the danger "unhelped" than have become a "subject" Frank
I have never liked fixed wing take offs or landings unless I was jumping from one. I really like helicopters though and since (for a certain period of time) I was a door gunner on a Bell (Huey) UH-C, I do believe them to be the safest and best ways to fly. I still envision myself building a gyro-copter one of these days. Snoopy hat and goggles here I come!
@Bobby Cole By this, do you mean an Autogyro? Have had aspirations to build one, too. Certain aspects associated with them are troubling, however. BTW, was the "Huey" the one having two rotors? Good design, no tail rotor, no torque reaction to fuselage. Frank
This is the Huey UH1-C gunship we used in Nam. There are several dual rotor choppers ranging from the large cargo ships like the CH-34 and -54 to the smaller Kaman. They are noted as being more stable than the main and tail rotor jobs but either way, I definitely do like choppers more than fixed wings. And yeah, autogyro is one name of the play toys I would like to have. I saw a YouTube video of a guy flying around in a bathtub with 4 small rotors like a drone has.
@Bobby Cole A crop dusting company working cotton fields outside Phoenix always drew our interest when they used a chopper exactly like the above, though it had a wrap-around fuselage, and I believe had been converted with a good-sized gas turbine engine. Two rotors, counter-rotating, set at angles to one-another, geared together so they could never hit each other, no tail rotor. The turbine exhaust was at top and rear of fuselage, a big open pipe about 10 inches in diameter. This thing made the strangest sound, and the rotors turned slowly enough so you could almost see them. Highly-maneuverable, though I never understood quite how it was achieved. The big bi-planes they also used when reaching the end of a row, swept up and over perhaps 20 rows before reversing direction, thus requiring interlaced flying. The 'copter guy swept upwards, nearly straight up, rolled sidewise and almost upside down, coming down in line with the next adjacent set of rows! Absolutely amazing! The sound was indescribable. I saw him land once where they had parked the tank wagon, and re-filled his tanks. Idling, the rotors were clearly visible, the exhaust a shrieking whine. I took pics, and they are lost.......Frank
Looks like the Kaman................... Another one was the Husky which was developed in the U.K. The northwest U.S. uses them for logging and such even though they were deployed in Vietnam in '69. At the time it was touted as being the most stable and had both rotors on the same mast.