AN ALLOA teenager took to the skies at the weekend as he became the youngest person from his gliding club to fly solo.

Evan Skelhorn fulfilled a lifelong dream on Saturday morning as he took his glider into the air on his own for the first time on his 14th birthday – the minimum legal age anyone can fly solo.

From the age of three Evan has been obsessed with planes and with a target of one day being a pilot, the youngster took a major step to smashing that goal.

As his family watched on from the ground at the Scottish Gliding Centre in Portmoak, Evan sailed into the sky after two test flights with instructors – an experience he loved and will never forget according to his mum, Arlene.

She told the Advertiser: “It all went perfectly. He absolutely loved it, I think he has become pretty addicted to it because he went back up twice on the Sunday, once for 45 minutes on his own.

“All the cadets soaked him with buckets of water after it, as a sort of initiation.”

Arlene admitted before the flight that she would be “feeling sick” until he landed safely, but had a helper on hand on the day to ease her worry.

She continued: “I had one of the instructor pilot standing with me the whole and he talked me through everything that was happening. That really helped me a lot.”

Now that Evan has got the first solo flights out the way, Arlene doesn’t expect things to slow down just yet.

“He will go for his bronze badge now which you get after ten solo flights,” she said.

“Just now you need to have a test flight before every solo flight, but once you get your bronze you can just go up whenever you want.

“After that he will probably go on to be an instructor. It is unbelievable that he is doing it all at his age.”

The maiden flight for Evan was also a record breaker as he became his club’s youngest ever solo pilot – although Arlene said it almost never happened.

She said: “He was one of the first up in the morning, but he was fortunate, actually, because the weather got a bit worse as the day went on and they cancelled all the afternoon’s flying. So he is lucky he got up early.”