Brittany Wildt (Texas)

Three years ago airplanes were the biggest fear of my life. At the time I absolutely would not get into an airplane, even flying commercial. That is, until I met my current boyfriend who told me the only way to get over it is to just do it and take flying lessons. My first flight ever was three years ago in a Porterfield. My boyfriend decided to turn my first flight into a flying lesson. I had no clue what was going on with anything, even turning the airplane on the ground with my feet on the rudder pedals.

Over the next year and a half I took flying lessons in a Cessna 172. I was not regular with my lessons, only taking them once every month or two. Then one day it just clicked with me that I can do this! This is not as scary as everyone always makes it out to be. When I finally realized I wanted to pursue my pilot’s license, everything happened very quickly. It took me five months of consistent training and flying the 172 to finish my training and get my license in December of 2015.

Since then I’ve earned my multi-engine rating and I knew when I finished my multi-engine I wanted to learn to fly a taildragger. My boyfriend, Scott Glover, has a museum where we live and it has several taildraggers I always flew in with the guys. These are some of my favorite airplanes, especially the open cockpit taildraggers. It was a real challenge at first keeping the tailwheel straight on landing. I’ve gone from one flight in the Porterfield 3 years ago, to training in a Stearman, Waco, and a Piper Cub. When a PA-12 came to the museum it took me 3 weeks in it to get my tailwheel endorsement.

In one year’s time I’ve been excited to earn three different ratings. I have found that taildraggers are some of my absolute favorite airplanes. I have about 25 hours in taildraggers. Most of my time came from picking up a Waco in the Mojave Desert in California and flying the open cockpit airplane back home – 3 days, 13 hours of flying time, no night time flying. Every 2 1/2 hours we stopped for fuel and continued on our route. It was one of the most amazing experiences of my life. We flew through mountains and over the deserts in this small two-seat airplane and I loved every minute of the long flight.

I am looking forward to getting checked out in the Stearman, Waco, Birddog and the Swift in the near future.