Chicken Wings How it all began.
From a boy’s dream to flying fire helicopters and drawing chickens.
When Mike was very little growing up in Austria he loved boats and horses. But all of that changed when he turned eight and his dad took him and his brother to visit an airshow. It was at this event when Mike was fascinated by the performance of an AV-8 Harrier and the local aerobatic team. Walking home with an autograph from the Harrier pilot he knew then what he wanted to do for a living. Mike couldn’t wait until he finished school and started working every free minute as helper for a small maintenance outfit at his local airport fueling planes and helping around the shop at the tender age of 15. He worked basically for free to earn the occasional flight lesson here or there and was able to call himself a licensed glider pilot by age 18.
After he finished his degree in Electronic Engineering, he joined the military for a year like every young Austrian has to since the country still has the mandatory draft in place. Of course he wanted to join the Air Force and fly jets or helicopters but suffered a crushing blow of reality when he didn’t make it into flight school because he was slightly nearsighted. His dreams shattered at first, he wasn’t about to let this little hurdle ruin his dream of becoming a pilot. An opportunity within the military came up when they were looking for volunteers to fill peacekeeper positions within the United Nations. Mike signed up for a year with the UN in the divided country of Cyprus. “I had no idea what I was getting myself into, but I loved the idea of living my own little adventure and the money was very enticing,” he says. The UN mission paid similar to the GI bill we have in the States but with the exception that it paid tax free cash which one can use in whichever way they want.
Mike took the money and set out to the States to fulfill his dream of becoming a helicopter pilot. The idea of flying fixed wing aircraft for a living was dropped the second he experienced his first helicopter ride during his mission in Cyprus where the pilot let him try his luck at the controls and even showed him how to hover. It’s now 14 years since Mike told his family “I am going to the U.S. to learn how to fly helicopters. I’ll be back in a few months!!”
As it happens to many students in this career, Mike ran out of money during his CFI training. He went back to fixing airplanes and kept himself current with maintenance flights in airplanes and helicopters. It was years later when finally an opportunity presented itself. He was offered to fly a little Jet Ranger as the backup charter pilot while still working in the shop as long as there were no flights. This led to him finishing his CFI ticket because the owner also needed CFI’s who can teach in the Jet Ranger, which led to Mike eventually stepping away from the maintenance world again to teach full time and fly charter flights.
Eventually Mike worked his way into the bigger AStars and Twin Stars and flew offshore for a while. Being an AStar pilot and an A&P mechanic eventually landed him a job offer as fire pilot. “It was a dream come true,” Mike says. “I knew I wanted to be a pilot but being a fireman was always another dream I would try to follow in case this flying thing wasn’t going to work out.”
He was a firefighter at his local volunteer fire department when he wasn’t in school or at the airport. Now he had the opportunity to combine his two passions and he took it. You can find him somewhere in the woods at some fire every season now since 2001 living his personal dream of flying helicopters and fighting fires. “I love it! And on top of that it feels very rewarding when you get the chance to help people,” he tells us. He is now the chief pilot of Guardian Helicopters Inc. based in Van Nuys, California. Oh, and as for his early passions: He never bought a horse but when he is at his home base in California, he lives on a boat in the Pacific Ocean.
What does all of this have to do with chickens flying airplanes?
This is where Mike’s brother Stefan comes in. Stefan was interested in aviation but not enough to devote his whole life to the dream of becoming a pilot. He built model planes and flew a few RC planes but actually got himself something one could call a "decent education" (a masters degree in international trade). Just like his brother, he has inherited his parents' "traveling bug" and so his studies brought him to Tokyo, Japan, where he spent more than two years in total, ate a lot of Sushi during that time and received several scholarships to study at Keio University and Tokyo University.
After that he decided to become a freelancing illustrator and designer, lest he would have to find a real job. He has been reading and drawing comics since he was a little boy, and considers turning his hobby into a job as one of the best decisions he ever made. After all, the business degree has proven quite useful while setting up his own business.
Whenever Mike would visit his home town in Austria, he kept telling his stories from flight training, his time as a CFI and his experiences flying tourists and other charters. And when you keep telling funny aviation anecdotes to a cartoon artist…. See where this is going?
Ultimately, the idea of Chicken Wings was born in November 2001, when Mike came to visit the family for their mother’s birthday. It all started with a few sketches on a kitchen paper towel; late at night, while Mike and Stefan were watching TV and drinking a few beers. They came up with the setting, the characters and the storyline quite quickly. In the first couple of years the development was rather slow, because they were both busy with their "regular" careers, but over time, Chicken Wings was gaining more and more momentum. It has now become more than just a part time job and a serious passion. And rest assured this is only just the beginning! (They kept the paper towel of course.)
Chicken Wings has grown into a worldwide venture with Chuck and his friends showing up in aviation magazines all over the globe and in eight different languages. There are currently two comic books with collections of their strips in circulation with a third one on the way in a few weeks. They also published a coloring book for kids in order to draw the next generation towards this great passion or profession.
By Michael and Stefan Strasser