LadiesLoveTaildraggers

Here’s the third installment of “Who’s Who”  (i.e. “Who’s Coming”!) to our Lady Taildraggers & Friends fly-in May 31 through June 3. Lots more so keep checking back. I’m trying to preview everyone who’s registered to attend between now and our fly-in!

Dianna Stanger from Olivia, Texas plans on arriving Friday in her Waco UPF-7  …… or was it her helicopter?!

Dianna Stanger Waco flying

Sheila Mabbitt’s from Nashville, Tennessee and says she hopes to be off work so she can fly in Friday. Sheila flew DC3′s in the Gulf oil spill clean up efforts. She’s not sure what wings she’ll be flying to Savannah. Sheila and her group will be camping on the field.

Sheila Mabbitt

Sarah Kelly Arnold, who owns & operates Chilhowee Gliderport in Tennessee, will be arriving Thursday for just one night.  Sarah will be flying a PA-17 Vagabond. She writes, “I’d love to come the whole time but I’ll have to get back to the Gliderport for the weekend. I’m so excited the Fly-in will be close enough for me to come part of the time. ”

Sarah Kelly Arnold

Phil & Tess Jones are flying in Saturday from Markleville, Indiana in their RV7.

Phil & Tess Jones

Patty Plantz  will be flying their Bellanca Crusair from Madison, Wisconsin Thursday and camping for 3 nights. They hope to round a few more up from their neck of the woods for the adventure.

Patty Plantz (right)

This is pretty cool. Deborah McFarland from Jasper, Georgia will be flying “Lester”, N1347B, her Luscombe 8E to the fly-in on Friday.  Husband Henry is planning on flying his own Luscombe 8A ,”Lucy”, in too!

Deb McFarland & Lester

Patsy Meridith from Elizabethton, TN will be arriving Friday flying her Highlander. Patsy says “We’re first-timers to this fly-in. Really looking forward to it!!”

Patsy Meridith

Please register if you’re planning on attending;  Registration for Flyin

Judi Gordon is based at C77, Poplar Grove Airport, Illinois.

Judy Gordon

It’s an old photo but it will have to do until I start flying again

Cathy Page is based at Ryan Field Airport, (KRYN) Tucson, Arizona and flies an RV6.

Cathy Page, RV6

I found out about your site from my friend Summer Martell who flew her Student Prince out to Ohio from West Washington last summer for the LLT fly in.

RV6, the day I bought it. Getting a little checkout then flying it home.

Looking forward to meeting some as time goes on. I may even be able to piece together coming out to the fly-in coming up next month, if the stars align. Maybe even find a willing passenger to share the adventure.

My Pitts

-

My first and favorite, C170B

Thank you,

As promised, here’s a few more girls (and guys) who have registered for our Lady Taildraggers & Friends Fly-in. We’re counting down the days and are less than 3 weeks out right now.

Anne Wright’s flying in Thursday from Ann Arbor, Michigan in her Super Cub and will be camping on the field at Savannah, Tennessee. Anne is also one of our guest speakers at the fly-in.

Anne Wright & her cargo podded Super Cub!

Anne’s known for more than that great looking Super Cub. She’s got a really cool collection of tshirts….

Gotta love this one!

Helen Brennan & Sandy Maurer are flying in together in Helen’s 1946 Taylorcraft BC12-D on Thursday.

Helen Brennan flying her Tcraft

I loved it when Helen offered her passenger seat to any lady that needed a ride to the LLT fly-in! Sandy took her up on her offer. Both Helen & Sandy are from Ohio and both came to our fly-in last year. Sandy even flew her Grumman Cheeta in. Yep, Sandy’s a nosewheel gal but flew her Cheetah over to see what all the “taildragger” fuss was about. We haven’t converted her yet but she’s making a big leap in the right direction flying in with Helen!

Grumman Cheetah owner Sandy and woman pilot friend at last year's Lady Taildragger Flyin

Lisa Martin is coming a long, long way. She’ll be flying in Thursday in her PA18-150 all the way from Worland, Wyoming and their’s will be a mother-daughter adventure.

Back-country Super Cub girl, Lisa Martin

Jill Tallman plans on flying in Friday from Frederick, Maryland in her PA-28-140 (’68 Piper Cherokee 140). If the name sounds familiar it’s probably because Jill’s Associate Editor, AOPA Flight Training and AOPA Pilot magazines and you can’t have lived in the aviation world without having read some of Jill’s articles.

Jill W Tallman

Nancy Warren & Rusty Richards are flying Rusty’s gorgeous Cessna 195 from Columbus, Indiana on Saturday. Rusty flies for the airlines and Nancy is one of our lady taildragger pilots who happens to write a monthly column (WOMEN IN THE SKIES) for www.aircraftowneronline.com.

Nancy Warren & Rusty Richards

Lots more later!!

Elise Roche is at it again; having a great time flying a 1955 Super Cub in Austria! Thanks Elise for posting some pictures that we can all envy – flying a beautiful taildragger on a gorgeous day in the Alps. Hope my sidekick (Google Translate) and I got it right!

Elise Roche ♥ at Fliegerhorst Fiala Fernbrugg Aigen

-

Simply great;-) At remote airfield in Austria

-

Flying our beautiful Piper Super Cub (year of manufacture 1955) in the Austrian Alps

-

Another photo of our 1955 Super Cub

-

-

-

Elise Roche wake-up call for the dad on Sunday;-) - with Ludwig Bretterebner

-

According to the weather report today it is rainy and unstable! The weather report was completely wrong.

Everybody keeps asking me,  ”WHO’s coming to our Tennessee Lady Taildraggers Fly-in this year?!?!” Well, you can bet a lot of very cool ladies and interesting taildraggers! Here’s just a few of the girls planning on flying in but there’s way too many to show all in one post. What I can do is highlight a few at a time and we’ll feel like we know each other by the time our fly-in arrives! In the next couple weeks I’ll preview everyone who has registered to attend.

Valerie Thal-Slocum’s from Moscow, TN and plans on flying in Friday, June 1 and camping for 2 nights.

Valerie Thal-Slocum and her Cessna 195

-

Valerie's hoping to get her hangar mate, Kelly, to fly in too.

Lorraine Morris is from Poplar Grove, Illinois and is flying in Thursday, May 31.

Lorraine Morris & C150TD

Lorraine & her husband Ken recently bought their dream plane, a Beech 18, and who knows ….. maybe they’ll arrive in it!

The Morris' "Sweet Pea", Beech 18

Melissa Abner is from Pleasant View, TN and will be flying her BC 12 D–Taylorcraft in on Friday, June 1 and camping.

Melissa Abner with her daughter & '46 Tcraft

Jean O’Cuilinn is from Alpine, Texas and will be flying her 8KCAB Decathlon 850 miles to get to our fly-in. Jean says “Don’t know what a poker run is, but I’m not flying 850 miles to not do it! This will be my first fly in, other than breakfast flyins out here so I’m excited about it.” Jean’s rounded up another of our lady taildragger pilots to join her on the journey, Jennifer Pena.

Jean O'Cuilinn & N102GD

Jennifer Peña is from Terlingua, Texas, 75 miles south of Alpine. The girls are going to make it a 2-day trip with a stop half-way to visit Jennifer’s dad and plan on arriving at Savannah Thursday, May 31.

Jennifer Peña

I’m keeping my fingers crossed the weather gods look favorably on us all and all our trips are blue ski & severe clear. Please send me an email with any questions you have about the fly-in  (Email Judy ).  There’s plenty of room at Savannah for anybody that wants to come – I understand there are still a couple rooms available at the Pickwick Landing Lodge and even more at the Days Inn of Savannah. Not too late to register – please join us!

I’m not the golfer sort but most golf courses are packed this time of year so I know they’re out there. Anyone interested in coming early or staying late for a round is welcome at the Pickwick Landing State Park Golf Course.

http://www.tngolftrail.net/traditionals/pickwicklanding/

Mon. thru Thurs. – Senior rates (includes 18 holes and cart). $25.00

Friday and Sat. – 18 holes and cart. $37.00

Sunday. – 18 holes and cart. $40.00

After 2 PM til Twilight – 18 holes with cart. $27.00

The golf course number is 731-689-3145

Bobbie Breeden & custom Super Cub

Here’s an incredible story from the “Alaska Dispatch News” you may not have heard. This video is of 17 year old student pilot, Bobbie Breeden, preparing for the 2011 Short Takeoff and Landing competition at the Valdez, Alaska Fly-in. He’s flying a modified Super Cub with 210 hp and a light weight composite propeller. Watch it because the story begins here.

So what happens next? Bobby came in 4th place overall in the competition with a total distance of 101 feet – including the competition’s shortest takeoff distance of 36 feet. A pretty amazing feat for a 17 year old student pilot from Virginia. But the story continues. The competition was in April 2011 and along came July 2011 and Bob & son Bobbie are on a several week flying trip around Alaska. They’re off flying the Wrangell Mountains having a great adventure and according to Bob, “discovering and landing new landing zones all day, mostly on glacier tops on exposed ice, below the snow level — which was still around 5,000 feet on the glacier top at this early date in July.”

“At the end of the day, we landed in a wide river valley about two miles above where a glacier collided with a mountain wall, with the river cutting in between. We walked down to this point, safely along the mountain and well away from the glacier, to where a big blue glacier face stood opposite the mountain, and explored this spot for almost an hour, and took a lot of pictures. There seemed to be no threat, and even a comforting thought that any falling ice would easily be swept away by the swift river.”

“There was a small gravel bar on our side of the river, across from the glacier — and we decided that we would bring the plane into the gravel bar for a photo.”

“Once there with the plane, we walked around and took some photos, but within a minute of arriving, we heard some crackling in the ice. Before we could get in the plane to depart, a piece came down and instantly displaced the river beneath it, creating a 3 to 5-second blast of sand and water, comparable to an explosion. It shot across the river at us. I dropped my camera while instinctively putting my hands over my face and turning my back to the spray and blast, which swept me up the sand and gravel of the river bank. The plane slid sideways 30 feet, and was crushed up against a stationary block of ice, knocking the gear off and smashing one wing and the tail. The fuselage was twisted and the fabric open. The water sluiced back into the river and all was quiet, less than 15 seconds after it started. We were soaked to the skin.”

“We located each other and the greatest dread passed as I realized that Bobby was OK. We gathered our clothes bag, food, tent, sleeping bags, SPOT transmitter and satellite phone from the baggage area and got to safer, higher ground. We found a place in the sun but behind a boulder to break the breeze. We got out of our wet clothes into dry. After collecting ourselves, and perhaps 30 minutes after the event, we tried calling Donna Claus at Ultima Thule Lodge. Not reaching the Lodge right away, we also tried Dave Calkins to let someone know in Anchorage that we would need to be picked up. Soon after talking with Dave, we reached Donna, and a couple of hours later Loni Habersetzer, whom we had talked with earlier in the day, came and picked us up.”

“The photos here were taken after the initial event. What you see here is much different from the day of the incident. As new ice continuously fell, the river bed changed as well. The original gravel bar was strewn with large ice blocks. As the glacier continued to calve, large blasts of water continued to alter the riverbed and batter the plane. You can see why the plane could not be retrieved once the glacier became unstable.”

“10 days later, the plane had been moved 100 yards by continuous blasts of water from the calving glacier. The entire glacier had advanced far enough that when large pieces tipped over, they landed directly on the plane.
I got word from my friend who flew over the site on Aug. 7, more than a month after the incident, and he said that the terrain has changed so much that it was entirely unrecognizable from what it looked like the day the incident occurred. The glacier has advanced and covered the original site. There is no trace remaining of the plane.”

Entire article at http://www.alaskadispatch.com/article/super-cub-plane-crushed-alaska-glacier?page=0,1

Aune Price is based at 06C, Schaumburg Regional Airport, Chicago/Schaumburg, Illinois.

Aune flying Upper Saranac Lake

Greetings fellow lady taildraggers. I am thrilled to have found this site!  I’m the proud owner of a 1948 Stinson 108-3 which my father restored in Hawaii when I was 4 years old.  When I was about 32, my father decided to sell the plane and trade it in for a J-3 Cub.

Stinson N529C

It would have broken my heart to see the plane go – so – I commuted from Seattle, WA to Naples, NY until I soloed in the Stinson, and then purchased it from my father, flew it out to Seattle, got my license, and have flown and loved it ever since.  I relocated to the Chicago area in 2006 and am now married with a 2+ year old son who regularly begs to wake up ‘Charlie’ (N529C) so we can fly.  I would love to connect with folks – please drop me an email.

N529C, "Charlie"

We live about 1 1/2 hours flying time south of OshKosh and regularly have our taildragger friends stop for a meal and shower enroute to the show.  Depending on how many visitors we get this year, you may be sleeping on the floor but you are welcome to join us.  You’ll need Mode-C (or a call ahead to the O’Hare Flight Center) to get in under the 30NM veil but land at Schaumburg Regional (06C; no tower) and we’ll come get you.

Regards,

Aune H. Price
ahalunen@hotmail.com

New paint job on my spinner!

I’ve been dreaming about a new spinner for my Rans S7 for months and I can’t tell you how excited I am about finally getting the job done! Boyd and I have way more hours invested in planning, sanding, taping, more taping, and painting than I ever dreamed possible.

Oh, so cool!

It still needs a little work but it turned out pretty darn cool.

Opened the hangar door tonight for the unveiling. Not a soul around to admire it! (:

My “vanilla” spinner was painted perfectly but seemed like such a waste of space – it need a little pzazz! But it wasn’t just the spinner that needed attention, the top and bottom cowl had seen better days and were in desperate need of a touch up.

Wow, it's amazing what a fresh paint job can do!

Painting the spinner came in 3 steps…

"Periwinkle blue" all over to match the trim on the Rans for the first color coat. No taping yet.

Then we taped it and sprayed the white. Sorry, no picture though.

And the last color sprayed was the yellow.

It had to dry overnight which was a painfully long time to wait to see what it would look like!

But 24 hours later I was as happy as I could be screwing it to the mount and finally getting to stand back and admire it!

I’m in love!

:)

There are a few spots that need some dry sanding but for the most part it’s done. Of course, the hangar’s a wreck since we’ve been almost living in it for a week – probably time to vacuum (i.e. take the leaf blower to it again). Love my hangar gas grill! It’s been grilled brats and turkey burgers all week, lots of peanuts, Frito’s and diet cokes! Rule of thumb…. if you’re in a hangar, all junk food is legal. Diet when you’re home!

Saturday's almost here and I guarantee you, I'm flying and showing this baby off!