How I Learned to Fly
Adventures of a Baby Boomer, Book 2
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How I Learned to Fly
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Narrated by:
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Thomas Shaw
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By:
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Thomas Shaw
About this listen
I think I was destined to fly.... My dad was a barnstormer pilot back in the 1930s (which I talk about in my audiobook Growing up in Oklahoma). This is where I think the DNA thing kicked in, and I wouldn't be satisfied until I was flying through the air. I designed and built my own ultralight aircraft and literally taught myself to fly. Let me take you on some of these adventures; I think you will enjoy them as much as I did.
This audiobook is in three parts:
Part 1: how I learned to fly, and if it wasn't for a stranger (who mysteriously disappeared), I wouldn't be telling you this story.
Part 2: my first combat mission and how your mind can make things more interesting.
Part 3: my secret mission, and I will never do anything like it again.
Come along with me as I share these adventures with you.... I think they will make you smile.
©2011 Thomas Shaw (P)2016 Thomas ShawListeners also enjoyed...
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- Unabridged
-
Overall5 out of 5 stars 1,622
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 1,422
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Story5 out of 5 stars 1,421
The world's foremost designer in Formula One, Adrian Newey OBE is arguably one of Britain's greatest engineers and this is his fascinating, powerful memoir. How to Build a Car explores the story of Adrian's unrivalled 35-year career in Formula One through the prism of the cars he has designed, the drivers he has worked alongside and the races in which he's been involved.
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2 out of 5 stars
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Snooze fest
- By moo on 02-09-20
By: Adrian Newey
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Before Topgun Days
- The Making of a Jet Fighter Instructor
- By: Dave Bio Baranek
- Narrated by: Stephen Hoye
- Length: 4 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 54
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 48
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 48
Before becoming an instructor in the Navy's Topgun program, Dave "Bio" Baranek was just another kid with a dream. Upon graduating from college, he joined the Navy with the goal of becoming a fighter pilot. But, his eyesight waning, he knew that he would never be able to reach that goal. Undaunted, he plowed ahead and found his niche as a radar intercept operator in the backseat of the sleek, new Grumman F-14 Tomcat.
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5 out of 5 stars
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SHB
- By Kindle Customer on 06-10-23
By: Dave Bio Baranek
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Tail-End Charley
- Stories from an American Fighter Pilot in World War II
- By: James E. Brown
- Narrated by: Bob Souer
- Length: 11 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 246
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 218
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 218
On his 19th birthday, James E. Brown tries to fake to his flight instructor that he has flown before. On his 21st birthday, Brown is on his way home after logging 85 missions in a P-47 fighter over Italy, France, and Germany. Brown's stories surrounding his training and combat experiences in World War II reveal brushes with death, continuous peril and, ultimately, a coming of age for a young man whose freshman year in college becomes instead a heroic engagement with one of the fiercest enemies his country has ever encountered.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Good read !
- By kevin on 06-19-18
By: James E. Brown
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Bomber Pilot: A Memoir of World War II
- By: Philip Ardery
- Narrated by: James Killavey
- Length: 9 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 97
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 88
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 86
"The sky was full of dying airplanes" as American Liberator bombers struggled to return to North Africa after their daring low-level raid on the oil refineries of Ploesti. They lost 446 airmen and 53 planes, but Philip Ardery's plane came home. This pilot was to take part in many more raids on Hitler's Europe, including air cover for the D-Day invasion of Normandy. This vivid firsthand account records one man's experience of World War II air warfare.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Fascinating...and true story
- By Loretta on 06-24-15
By: Philip Ardery
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A Race to Freedom
- The Mira Slovak Story
- By: David Williams
- Narrated by: Brian Callanan
- Length: 16 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall5 out of 5 stars 31
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 28
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Story5 out of 5 stars 28
Mira Slovak was born in Czechoslovakia and endured both the Nazi occupation and the brutal Russian liberation. He joined the Czech Air Force, rising to captain by the age of 21. When he could no longer tolerate life under the Communists, he hijacked an airliner and flew across the Iron Curtain to freedom. He outlasted communism, and when it collapsed in 1990, he returned to his home, only to realize his true home was and always would be the US.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Free to live as an American.
- By cosmitron on 06-08-18
By: David Williams
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Topgun Days
- Dogfighting, Cheating Death, and Hollywood Glory as One of America's Best Fighter Jocks
- By: Dave "Bio" Baranek
- Narrated by: Jeremy Arthur
- Length: 7 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 344
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 300
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 298
Dave Baranek (callsign "Bio") was one of 451 young men to receive his Wings of Gold in 1980 as a naval flight officer. Four years later, seasoned by intense training and deployments in the tense confrontations of the Cold War, he became the only one of that initial group to rise to become an instructor at the navy's elite Fighter Weapons School. As a Topgun instructor, Bio was responsible for teaching the navy's and Marine Corps' best fighter pilots how to be even better. He schooled them in the classroom and then went head-to-head with them in the skies.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Top Gun or Topgun
- By Randy on 02-19-13
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Aussie Grit
- My Formula One Journey
- By: Mark Webber
- Narrated by: Nicholas Osmond
- Length: 11 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 233
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 215
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 214
Mark Webber was at the centre of one of the most captivating chapters in the history of Formula One. In 2010, while racing for Red Bull, he and his teammate, Sebastian Vettel, went head to head for the World Championship. There could be only one winner. Since retiring from Formula One, Mark has concentrated on endurance racing, including the legendary Le Mans 24-hour race.
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2 out of 5 stars
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this story change my perspective of Mark Webber.
- By Neb on 09-01-16
By: Mark Webber
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Life's Too Short to Cry
- The Compelling Story of a Battle of Britain Ace
- By: Tim Vigors
- Narrated by: Roger Davis
- Length: 9 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 30
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 25
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 25
It is not often that a long-hidden gem of a manuscript is published, bringing a moment in WWII history to vivid life for today’s audiences. Geoffrey Wellum’s First Light was one example. The memoir of Timothy Vigors is another. Born in Hatfield but raised in Ireland and educated at Eton and Cranwell, Vigors found himself in France in 1940 flying Fairey Battle bombers. After the Fall he joined the fighters of 222 Squadron, with whom he saw frantic and distinguished service over Dunkirk and persevered through the dangerous days of the Battle of Britain, when he became an ace.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Excellent
- By Ethan on 03-24-21
By: Tim Vigors
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Bird Dream
- Adventures at the Extremes of Human Flight
- By: Matt Higgins
- Narrated by: Adam Verner
- Length: 9 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 45
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 36
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 35
Human flight is one of the last great challenges on Earth. Not like how the Wright brothers flew, but how we fly in our dreams. This is the goal of the Wingsuit Landing Project: to soar through the sky at speeds up to one hundred miles per hour and to land without the aid of a parachute. This project is the creation of 37-year-old Jeb Corliss, Jr., a Southern Californian who seeks to emulate a mode of flight more like a flying squirrel than bird or plane.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Good read
- By Jowly on 04-22-15
By: Matt Higgins
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Come Up and Get Me
- An Autobiography of Colonel Joe Kittinger
- By: Joe Kittinger, Craig Ryan
- Narrated by: Christian Rummel
- Length: 9 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 72
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 66
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 66
A few years after his release from a North Vietnamese prisoner-of-war camp, in 1973, Colonel Joseph Kittinger retired from the Air Force. Restless and unchallenged, he turned to ballooning, a lifelong passion as well as a constant diversion for his imagination during his imprisonment. His primary goal was a solitary circumnavigation of the globe, and in its pursuit he set several ballooning distance records, including the first solo crossing of the Atlantic in 1984. But the aeronautical feats that first made him an American hero had occurred a quarter of a century earlier....
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4 out of 5 stars
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A rewarding read
- By Andrew Braddick on 03-25-13
By: Joe Kittinger, and others
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Malta Spitfire
- The Diary of a Fighter Pilot
- By: George Beurling
- Narrated by: Roger Davis
- Length: 6 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 31
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 28
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Story5 out of 5 stars 27
25,000 feet above Malta -- that is where the Spitfires intercepted the Messerschmitts, Macchis and Reggianes as they swept eastwards in their droves, screening the big Junkers with their bomb loads as they pummeled the island beneath -- the most bombed patch of ground in the world.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Excellent story!
- By MStewart on 02-01-24
By: George Beurling
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The Right Stuff
- By: Tom Wolfe
- Narrated by: Dennis Quaid
- Length: 15 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 5,645
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 5,123
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 5,098
Millions of words have poured forth about man's trip to the moon, but until now few people have had a sense of the most engrossing side of the adventure: namely, what went on in the minds of the astronauts themselves - in space, on the moon, and even during certain odysseys on earth. It is this, the inner life of the astronauts, that Tom Wolfe describes with his almost uncanny empathetic powers that made The Right Stuff a classic.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Righteous Book, Righteous Narrator, Righteous MEN!
- By Gillian on 02-08-18
By: Tom Wolfe
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The Flight
- Charles Lindbergh's Daring and Immortal 1927 Transatlantic Crossing
- By: Dan Hampton
- Narrated by: John Pruden
- Length: 8 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 115
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 104
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 103
On the morning of May 20, 1927, a little-known pilot named Charles Lindbergh waited to take off from Roosevelt Field on Long Island. He was determined to claim the $25,000 Orteig Prize promised to the first pilot to fly nonstop from New York to Paris - a contest that had already claimed six men's lives. Just 25 years old, Lindbergh had never before flown over water. Yet 33 hours later, his single-engine monoplane, The Spirit of St. Louis, touched down in Paris.
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1 out of 5 stars
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The Flight: Charles Lindbergh
- By none on 12-08-18
By: Dan Hampton
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Harrier Boys, Volume 1
- From the Cold War Through the Falklands, 1969-1990
- By: Robert Marston
- Narrated by: Roger Davis
- Length: 9 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 25
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 25
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 25
In Harrier Boys, Volume One: Cold War Through the Falklands, 1969-1990, Robert Marston, who flew Harriers for many years, draws together accounts from others who worked with this unique jet through its history. The excitement, camaraderie, and pride of Harrier operators shine through in the personal stories of those whose lives were changed by their experience of this iconic aircraft, both on land and at sea.
By: Robert Marston
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Southern Storm
- The Tragedy of Flight 242
- By: Samme Chittum
- Narrated by: Keith Sellon-Wright
- Length: 6 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 52
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 49
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 49
On the afternoon of April 4, 1977, Georgia housewife Sadie Burkhalter Hurst looked out her front door to see a frantic stranger running toward her, his clothes ablaze, and, behind him, the mangled fuselage of a passenger plane that had just crashed in her yard. The plane, a Southern Airways DC-9-31, had been carrying 81 passengers and four crew members en route to Atlanta when it entered a massive thunderstorm cell that turned into a dangerous cocktail of rain, hail, and lightning. Forced down onto a highway, the plane cut a swath of devastation through the small town of New Hope.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Compelling read.
- By teri on 06-19-18
By: Samme Chittum
What listeners say about How I Learned to Fly
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance4 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Jetsonproducts
- 03-07-16
Very entertaining
I fly as well so I can relate to just how this guy must have felt. I found it very entertaining, looking forward to more of his adventures.
Jim
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