by Jeff Colbourne
Northern News Services

RANKIN INLET (Aug 27/97) - When we were kids, we were often asked what we'd like to be when we grew up. Some of us wanted to be teachers, doctors, race car drivers or astronauts.

For Rankin Inlet's Peter Dick, it was his dream to be a pilot.

Dick, now a middle-aged man, is sad to say he's not a pilot, but he flies planes every chance he gets, on a smaller scale. He builds and flies radio-controlled model planes.

"The personal satisfaction out of it is, one in the building of them ... and of course, the second part is the fact of knowing of what you built does fly. That's a rush in itself when you build an aircraft for the first time and see it fly," said Dick.

The passion for flight overtook Dick about 30 years ago, but raising a family took much of his free time away to fly.

It wasn't until he moved to Hay River in 1995 that he got back into it again.

"Two or three guys there were involved in it. I got to know them and the next thing you know we were up to as many as about 10 men with aircraft," he said.

They were flying out of a gravel pit in the beginning. Later on they found some land that they cleared off and planted grass on to make a 90 metres by 18 metres take off and landing strip.

"It was a lot of fun. It's just like any other kind of sport. The internal competitiveness, the camaraderie, you're in a little world of your own. Anybody that's there is there only for one thing and that's to talk about air planes or fly them." Last year Dick moved to Rankin Inlet to take up a new job as Nunavut Airport's Maintenance. Unfortunately, he's been unable to fly for the simple fact that the rough terrain there doesn't give him many places to fly.

This winter, however, he will be working on a floatplane which will run next summer off the water in a nearby lake.

Besides building aircraft to keep his flying interest up, Dick also has to maintain his flying skills. He plans to continue reading about model air plane flying and watching a few flying videos.

Flying can be very stressful and difficult if you don't have the necessary practice and training.

"The first three flights I didn't even make five minutes of time in the air because the mental stress, physical strain of being afraid of doing things right and what not," he said.

"All of a sudden your mind just goes blank and you don't know how to react any more, how to respond. It takes some getting used to. Even when I finally got to do my first solo flight I don't think I spent five minutes in the air and when I came down my knees were shaking and my hands were vibrating."