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In the late 1960s, when Stephen Dean was a boy, he used to watch the aeroplanes operating out of Clacton airfield. There was something about the sight and sound of them that fired his imagination and he resolved, at a very early age, to learn to fly.

Stephen Dean

It takes about 40 hours of flying to learn the techniques necessary to gain a private pilots' licence - and ideally this should be done over as short a period as possible.

Stephen didn't have the money to this...and it took him considerably longer to master the skills. Because he wasn't sure he would ever complete the course he didn't tell anyone of his ambitions. His secret mission took him three years to complete and he finally got his licence in 1996, much to the amazement of friends and family.

"I don't suppose anyone who has learned to fly will ever forget their first solo, I certainly won't. The feeling of exhilaration was absolutely fantastic. The sense that all of these things had come together over quite a long period of time. 

"You'd risen to these various challenges and you'd met them and you'd overcome them was a truly wonderful feeling. 

For Stephen, flying an aeroplane helps him clear his mind: "That sense of detachment from what's going on on the ground is, for me anyway, very much a part of flying. It's the same sort of sense of detachment you get, I think, from sailing.

Controls

"When you're flying the aeroplane you've got to concentrate on what you're doing all the time. All the other things that have gone on in the day are erased, at least temporarily, whilst you're up there enjoying the view. There's a tremendous sense of achievement."

Stephen currently flies a Cessna 150 out of Crowfield Airfield, north of Ipswich. It's a single-engined, two-seater aeroplane with a high wing, which means that from the cockpit there's a good view of the ground and a clear view ahead.

The Cessna 150 is commonly used for training, although you can't learn to fly from scratch at Crowfield. 

The aeroplane has two sets of controls and when you are learning to fly, and once you have qualified, you sit in the left hand seat. The instructor sits in the right hand seat and demonstrates the manoeuvre he or she is trying to teach.