I learned the mechanics of how to fly a plane, but I never lifted a plane off the ground.
We spent a lot of time in simulators. We were going to do it right.
I was interested in aerospace and flying, and the U.S. is really the best place in the world for flying.
On the first flight test of any spacecraft, you're going to find surprises.
VR really changes everything for flight because the old simulators for the PC were 2D, and you couldn't look around inside the cockpit and learn the controls or even track other planes through the cockpit.
I'm learning to fly, but I ain't got wings. Coming down is the hardest thing.
They don't hand out Ph.D.s in test piloting, but you pick up a tremendous amount of scientific and engineering knowledge along the way. After all, when you take up a brand new plane and put it through its paces to see if it will hang together, you are really flying somebody's theory.
By the time I got into test work, it was dying out. It wasn't really flight test at all; it was mostly testing new gadgets.
I showed it is possible to fly a little bit like a bird.
I never intended to become a professional pilot. But, as I became more curious about aircraft, and, well, not being John Travolta, I realized that the only way I was ever going to fly a jet is if I got a job.
I would actually love to fly. I think that that would be probably the most exhilarating feeling, and as close as you can get to true freedom.
I think aerobatic flying is athletic. I don't do aerobatic flying, but I would put that in a category of a sport. I would put regular flying in the category of an art or machine-type thing.
Connor Broekhart was born to fly, or more accurately he was born flying.
Once you are assigned to a flight, the whole crew is assigned at the same time, and then that crew trains together for a whole year to prepare for that flight.
In any aircraft you fly, you always think about what can go wrong, and you plan for it in advance. You always have back-up plans.
I'm 100 percent sure I'm becoming a really good helicopter pilot.
There was a show at Sesame Place where you could lay down on mat in front of a blue screen, and the monitor would show you flying with Super Grover. I must have been five years old when I did it, and I still remember it. Likely the origins of my acting bug.
I liked flying, when I got into it, loved it. And I found I was very good at it. I'm not modest about the fact that I was a good pilot.
And, I wouldn't consider myself to be a natural pilot; I've had to work at it.
I read, studied, and learned everything I could find about aviation. It was my greatest desire to become a pilot. I could already picture myself in the cockpit of an airliner or in a military fighter plane. I felt deep in my heart this was my thing!
My career has been spent developing airplanes.
There's an entire flight simulator hidden in every copy of Microsoft Excel 97.
The great thing about a pilot is you can make your mistakes and no-one sees them... Or they see them on iPlayer and it gets taken off a year later, to be disposed of or whatever's happened to it.
I was interested in flying beginning at age 7, when a close family friend took me in his little airplane. And I remember looking at the wheel of the airplane as we rolled down the runway, because I wanted to remember the exact moment that I first went flying... the other thing growing up is that I was always interested in science.
I never thought that one day that this NAS Jax would be the center of aviation excellence in the Southeast and from pole to pole.
