Manned flight has interested me since I was about eight years old. My first interest in planes was stirred by a visit to Shannon Airport which was a First Communion treat. I was given a book which detailed manned flight from early balloons to the Wright Brothers to the Concorde. Watching the comings and goings at Shannon that day was enough. I was hooked!
Around this time there was a flying club at Michael Smyth’s airfield at Coolbawn Cross. I spent many hours watching the little white aeroplane flying over the town. I have since met people who came to Fethard from as far away as Waterford and Birr to get their pilot’s licences in the 1970’s. Around the same time another regular sight in the skies was the Camp Rockwell balloon.

Photographed with Mick Smyth’s EI-AUE Rally 100 plane at this airfield at Coolbawn in the 1970’s are L to R: Joe Collins who was the Chief Flying Instructor in Birr at the time, Tim Webb, Joan Smyth, Mick Slattery, Grace Smyth, Michael Smith and Adrian Corcoran.

I had always wanted to fly but never gave it serious consideration thinking, incorrectly, that you had to be a mathematical genius to fly an aircraft. I had enquired about lessons in Waterford Airport and intended sometime to take at least one lesson. Then out of the blue a friend brought me to Moyne airfield near Thurles where she was going for a flying lesson – a Christmas present from her husband. That was my first time in a light aircraft. I began flying lessons the following week and have been flying ever since.

In the first lesson you learn the basics about the aircraft, how it works and how you work in it. After a brief introduction on the ground, you sit into the aircraft with the instructor and are shown how to operate the controls. You start the engine and you learn the first lesson – how to taxi to the runway.
A combination of nerves and ignorance of the controls makes the first attempt to taxi in a straight line something akin to a chicken running around a farmyard – all over the place. The instructor then takes the plane off and, once airborne, hands the controls over to you. This is the first step towards becoming a pilot. Eventually you learn to taxi in a straight line, take off, fly and, most important, how to land again. The day finally arrives when your instructor feels that you have undergone enough training to follow a fixed circuit and return to the airfield with both yourself and the plane in one piece. You go solo. It is your first time to fly the plane with nobody to help you if things go wrong. It sounds daunting but you will have flown the circuit so many times, you know you can do it. It only takes about ten minutes, but it changes you forever. All those hours sweating it out in the cockpit have paid off. You have now got your wings.

There is still a lot of work to be done before you get your full private pilot’s licence that will enable you to bring passengers with you. Monday night became study night in Joe Davy’s kitchen in Littleton. There I learned all I needed to know to pass the five written exams to get the full licence. Unlike school, this was not a chore, as I really wanted to learn.

It took three years from start to finish to get the licence, going to Moyne when the weather permitted to get airborne and acquire the skills and the necessary number of hours to qualify for my licence. And it has been most rewarding. Ireland from the air is spectacular. When I began flying, one of my dreams, which I fulfilled this summer, was to fly to the Aran Islands. I flew first to Birr, over the bogs and the Slieve Blooms, then over the Shannon which glistened for miles, dotted with cruisers enjoying the summer sunshine. From there I went to Galway, over Connemara, then out to Aran Mor. The return trip was via the Cliffs of Moher, the Burren, Miltown Malbay, Tarbert and back to Kilsheelan, all in five hours.

Michael Smyth’s airfield is no longer with us but Pat White’s strip in Derryluskin is now the focus for people flying around the area. Regular visitors fly in from airstrips all over the country. There are training facilities dotted all over the country some, like Moyne, operating out of a farm strip and some out of major airports. If your dream is to fly (for fun or for a living), check it out. Who knows what it might lead to?