Amwell man wins prestigious master pilot, mechanic awards
Amwell man wins prestigious master pilot, mechanic awards
Timothy Chopp can’t remember a time when he didn’t want to climb into the cockpit of a plane and take off across the heavens.
“As soon as I was alive, I wanted to fly,” Chopp explained from his home in Amwell Township.
Now 82 and still buckling up, revving up the engines and hurtling down the runway, Chopp’s lifetime of work as both a pilot and mechanic recently won him two prestigious honors. Earlier this month, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) gave him the Wright Brothers Master Pilot Award and the Charles Taylor Master Mechanic Award. Both were presented to Chopp at a meeting of the Washington Flyers Club at the Washington County Airport in South Franklin.
The two awards are the highest bestowed by the FAA, and it is exceptionally rare that someone receives both awards at the same time. The Charles Taylor Master Mechanic Award is meant to spotlight individuals who have demonstrated expertise when it comes to aviation and a commitment to safety over a 50-year period. Those honored are nominated by their peers. The Wright Brothers Master Pilot Award is named for the aviation pioneers and honors pilots who have at least a half-century of flying experience.
With a history of flying dating back to the 1960s, and a fascination that was sparked at least in part due to an uncle who was a pilot for TWA, you would think that getting a plane off the ground and getting it to a destination hundreds of miles away would now be as routine for Chopp as hopping in the car and heading to the grocery store is for most of us. But maneuvering a plane thousands of feet off the ground and keeping an eye on its nuts and bolts is, of course, a little bit more complicated than that.
“Every flight is a challenge,” Chopp said. “Every flight is a lot of planning.”
Chopp made his first solo flight in 1962, the year he graduated from Trinity High School. Shortly after, he enlisted in the U.S. Army. He made his way to Vietnam, where he worked on planes rather than flying them.
“When I was in Vietnam, I wanted to be an Army pilot,” he recalled. “But there was a long wait for flight training, so by the time my number was called. … I had been in the Army for 15 months, and the Army was not for me.”
Once he was back home, Chopp worked as a pipeline patrol pilot, flight instructor and launched World Citizens’ International in 1972, an air travel club in Washington that lasted for three years and offered excursions for its members. He also ferried assorted VIPs and luminaries as a corporate pilot for a number of years, with some of his clients including members of the band Kiss, singer Tom Jones and tennis superstar John McEnroe.
Long fascinated by the Berlin Airlift, which brought food and supplies to the western half of the divided city in 1948 and 1949 after the Soviet Union cut off access to it, Chopp founded the Berlin Airlift Historical Foundation almost 40 years ago. A nonprofit, it operates antique military cargo planes. One of those planes, called the Spirit of Freedom, was in the Berlin Airlift, and is a presence nowadays at air shows. It contains educational exhibits, and the plane is used for reenactments of the “candy drops” that had planes dropping candy bars attached to tiny parachutes during the Berlin Airlift so children could enjoy them.
“The museum is located inside the plane,” Chopp explained.
And even though he has been an octogenarian for a couple of years now, Chopp isn’t ready to call it a day when it comes to fixing or flying planes.
“I won’t quit,” he said.
More information on the Berlin Airlift Historical Foundation can be found at spiritoffreedom.org.