Expert: Cal Taylor - 12/14/2009

Question
Good Day Cal Taylor

I want to you tell me why anyone(or you) would have a deep passion for aviation. What is it that people (you) find fascinating?  
THANK YOU IN ADVANCE

Answer
Dear Mindi
You might as well ask what is so fascinating about classical music or art or literature or sailing ships. There are things that draw a person's attention from an early age and never lose their attraction. For me, I date my interest in aviation to the age o ten, when I spent a summer with my grandparents. There, I found a model airplane kit that had been partially completed by my uncle. Working with that led me to airplanes and aviaiton. My mother tells me thatthe interest in airplanes goes back even farther, but I can't attest to that.

I grew up in the post-WW2 period, when there was so much about all of the airplanes used by all participants in the war and the people who flew them. Those tales represented adventure and exploration and achievement to be emulated. My interest led me to working one summmer at the local airport and being paid in flying lessons. That is where I got my first twelve hours. That period was also not far from the Golden Age of aviation, the 1930s, when there was so much exploration and events that could not have happened without aviation. Amelia Earhart, Lindbergh, StExupery, DeHaviland and so many others who made aviation what it was.

I continued to build model airplanes, too. The infinite variety of shapes and configurations was fascinating. So many ways to build an airplane and it would fly! Those models were also connected to people and events and excitement, so it was a way for me to be connected with those things.

Eventually, I was in the air force, where I was a navigator in many different types of airplanes--B-52, C-141, C-5, C-133, C-130. Those duties took me to many places and into many interesting situations and experiences.

Even now, when I go to an air show or even hear an airplane flying over, I stop and look and follow it in the sky. Aviation will never lose its interest, to me or millions of other people. Aviation has great interest to many people for a multitude of reasons.

Again, it is as valid to ask why music or art or sailing ships are so fascinating and as difficult to answer.