Do you remember your first flight lesson? Philip Preston of Machesney Park, Illinois, certainly does. He remembers it every time he goes out to his hangar and sees the fully restored 1946 Aeronca Champ sitting there—it’s the very same aircraft he made his first flight in as an anxious 12-year-old in 1968.
“My dad took me and my brother David—who was 13 at the time—to the airport for a flight lesson. My brother went first, then I went. I sat in the front, no headset. I had never been in an airplane and it was overwhelming the senses, [with] the hand-propping noise and vibration and the fabric. It was totally otherworldly and exhilarating and frightening.”
