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HANNIBAL, MO. -- For some people, when they see an old car setting off in a farm field or maybe an old barn, they might get the itch to restore it.

And that's exactly what one northeast Missouri man did. But the young man's old car was really a 1954 Cessna airplane.

And now Dillon Barron has a lot to be proud of and he's still a little amazed at what he was able to accomplish with this old 1954 Cessna 170.

Dillon's dad, who is also a pilot, made a deal with him.

"The deal for this plane was I told him I would buy it if he would fix it up and get it flying again. So I really knew he would get it painted and engine done and the interior in it. I just had absolutely no idea he would take it to this level," Mike Barron said.

And that level is a complete restoration project on the old plane. The aircraft had sat over in the corner of the tarmac at the Hannibal Regional airport for the last 20 years. It had become an animal haven and basically abandoned. But over the last two years, Dillon took painstaking time to rework the entire plane inside and out.

"Well I'm going to use it to fly around. I don't want to just sit around and not want to fly it. I built it so I could still use it. But I'll definitely go around and see some different shows and meet new people, share this piece of history," Dillon said.

That piece of history, took Dillon and his plane to the experimental aircraft show in Osh Kosh, Wisconsin. It was such an eyecatcher, that Dillon and his Cessna won the Reserve Grand Champion for Classic Aircraft Restoration.

'The reward of it was really getting to hear the people reminisce. The old guys from way back, they they remembered these coming off the line in the factory. That was the most, the best reward of this restoration. However the award from Osh Kosh was just a great bonus," Dillion said.

Dillon said another added bonus on top of it all was the chance to park his "new" plane next to his grandfather's plane at Osh Kosh. It was three generations of Barron pilots who got to share a memory of a lifetime.

As a side note to his award at the Osh Kosh show, Dillon is one of the youngest pilots to ever win a Lindy award at the annual air show.