NYCAviation:
Looking Back: Fueling a Life of Aviation
Every aviation enthusiast has a collection of small stories that they can reminisce on to think about how they developed their passion for all that flies. This is mine.
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Email me anytime at [email protected].
Interesting story, I never knew the view from College Point was so good
Great read Phil. Thanks for sharing. Really hits home for me. I grew up in Flushing under the RWY 31 approach.
While I couldn't see the field from my building, I would often go up to the roof with binoculars and a point and shoot
in hand. The spotting fun would come to an abrupt end whenever a top floor neighbor reported footsteps on the roof.
Then a big, mean superintendent would come up and kick me out. Kinda like a foreshadowing of my future spotting at T5
with all the security dodging.
One day my friend and I walked 3 miles to LGA where we took pictures well into the night from the observation deck.
25 cent admission through the turnstile (free for kids that could jump).
I didn't know it at the time, but we had officially become diehard spotters. Our parents filed missing
persons reports and we were grounded for at least a month!
Last edited by Aviation.High.Guy; 2013-03-13 at 06:15 PM.
-Don B.
Ha! Don that is priceless, missing persons report! When I was growing up I had a fascination with getting on the roof of my house as well to try to see the NY skyline(I couldn't). I incurred the wrath of my father who would yell about me destroying the shingles
Ha- that's great. The crazy things kids do. As they say, payback's a bitch. I have a sonOriginally Posted by megatop412
that just turned 12. So far so good- no broken shingles
-Don B.
My earliest spotting was the 13L arrivals,and the 31L departures at JFK,viewed from 124th street in S.Ozone Park,in those halcyon days of the early 1960s there were still a lot of big props mixed with the jets, golden globe TWA 707s,blue ball Pan Am 707s, American Astrojet 707,and CV990s, BOAC VC10s along with the aforementioned Super Connies, Electras,and CL44s,it was a glorious era, and the Canarsie Approach was hopping ,seemingly round the clock,Alitalia DC8s, NE yellowbird 727s, Eastern DC9s,727s,every 2 minutes another liner screaming or rumbling overhead, along with the whop,whine,whop of New York Airways BV107s,and in the summer the sound of the of the jingle of the Mr.Softee truck adding to the mix, running with my cousins all over the streets and vacant lots ,having fun,getting dirty,getting in trouble, rooting for the Mets,and hoping ,praying,that one day i would fly into JFK under my own steam, and finally doing it in the 90's in of all things a freight dog DC3, wonderfully battered and real,a WW2 Navy Veteran,an old R4D, arcing over the Belt, dipping my wing over the Aqueduct,flying over the old sod,that hot September night in '94, thinking of that kid long ago looking up,and realizing after clearing 13L and breathing in a breeze redolent of Jamaica Bay and Jet A while taxiing toward the cargo area, that you can,if you are incredibly blessed,come home again.
The beehive hummm of the JT9D and GE CF680C2,the thunder of the JT8D-17,the rumble of the PW1830 and the high ,thin whine of the PW 545A are all music to my ears!
Phil, what a great story/article, I really enjoyed it especially the logbook story in IAH. In the time period you took your first flight LGA-IAH on CO was likely an MD-80, they were used frequently by CO at LGA during that era.
Cheers
LGA777
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