LadiesLoveTaildraggers

Kim Pardon flies an L-19 Bird Dog and is based at Gardner Municipal Airport, Gardner, Kansas (Identifier K34).

Kim tells us “I learned to fly a few years ago in a Citabria.  I now fly an L-19 Bird Dog  …. a Vietnam era liaison airplane similar in many ways to a Cessna 170.  I’m based at Gardner Municipal Airport – the best little airport in Kansas”.

Diana Richards keeps Citabria N4216Y at the private grass farm strip she and her husband, Tom, share in southwest Missouri, Identifier O8MO.  Rumor says her favorite airplane is named “Citabriaberry”!  Diana flies aerobatics and competes in her “beloved” Citabria.  Check out a few of her pictures from the POA website and links she has provided.

Diana tells me her first lesson was in a Champ when she was 13 years old.

“When I flew around the country for a month, two years ago, I landed on mostly grass strips, and two of my favorite were grass strips in Indiana.  I enjoyed spending the night in that adorable little cabin at Lee Bottom.”

For a wonderful article  written by Diana’s 12 year old niece, Elizabeth Triplett, and published in the February 2008 issue of IAC Sport Aerobatics Magazine click on the following PDF file.  How appropriate the title “My Aunt is a “roll model”!

drichardsflying-free_roll-model

And from an email from Diana:

There’s a link on PoA about my month long, grass fields tour and photos as my trip progressed.  It was a wonderful trip.  I’m trying to be more disciplined about writing a book about it, and am halfway done now.

http://www.pilotsofamerica.com/forum/showthread.php?t=13828

I wrote three article for Sport Aerobatics, but am really more excited about my niece getting her article in the magazine…she is a bright young woman and will  hopefully be able to take flying lessons some day.

You can click on the following AOPA site and see an article written about Diana:

http://flighttraining.aopa.org/members/ft_magazine/archives/article.cfm?article=7430

AOPA sent a professional photographer to the farm, and the fun part was taking him for his first aerobatic ride when we were through with the photo session.  He is 6′ 6” and we had a time getting him into the Citabria with a parachute on. LOL  It finally worked out and we had a fun flight that day and he even posted a few videos on You Tube that he took with his little camera.

Here is a link to an EAA article that talks about Young Eagle Flight Leaders and has some photos that I submitted to go along with the interview I had with them:

http://www.pilotsofamerica.com/forum/showpost.php?p=441104&postcount=17

Terri owns & flies her 1946 Taylorcraft BC12D1 and is based in Ohio.

“I fell in love with taildraggers after taking an intro course to aerobatics in a C150 Aerobat.  Since then I have flown in several aerobatic contests in borrowed airplanes such as a Pitts S2B, Christen Eagle and a Decathalon. ”

“One of my favorites is a little homebuilt SE5 (French WWI) replica.  It only has one seat and when I was offered the chance to fly it, I was a relatively new tailwheel pilot.  I jumped at the chance without thinking about it.  As I taxied out to the grass strip one of the tires came off and I had to taxi back.  After that was taken care of I managed to get off the ground.  As soon as I was airborne, my first thought was “Oh crap, now I have to land” and I had an audience of about 10 older guys (including my tailwheel instructor who is in his 80s).  Fortunately, I landed just fine and gained several new friends from that audience.”

Terri can be reached at doublet@bright.net.

By Judy Birchler, host of LadiesLoveTaildraggers.com

Champ N7569E flew from Indianapolis to Kewanee, IL Saturday morning against a strong headwind and over a broken layer a short part of the way.  I snapped a few pictures and thought I’d share with anyone interested in Aeroncas, slow flight and a good time.

Flight time to Kewanee on Saturday was 3 hours 40 minutes which was slow, but fine with me because I love to fly her, even at 63 mph!  Luckily that headwind turned into a tailwind the next morning which got us home in 2 hours, 20 minutes.  My husband loved flying that leg of the trip because it’s not often you see 126 mph on the GPS.

Also got reacquainted with event organizer and brand new daddy, Jody Wittmeyer.

Sorry to say the weather didn’t cooperate on Sunday morning.  With rain and thunderstorms moving in we decided to pass on the fly out breakfast and get on the way while we still could.  Thanks, Jody, for organizing your event, putting on a spread of food, providing cars and making it all possible!

Karen Greenfield flies a Pitts Special from Annapolis, Maryland.

Portions of an article in the Baltimore Sun by reporter Jonathan Pitts

June 14, 2009

“Sometimes, people would say things like, ‘Why are you here? Why aren’t you home with your family?’ ” she says, sounding less bitter than intrigued. “It did make you kind of angry for a while. But you learn to let it roll off you. The best thing is to show you know what you’re doing. Then it’s just not an issue. I suppose I did that.”

She retired a year and a half ago after a 31-year career.

One day in 1984, a workplace colleague told Greenfield he was a flight instructor. She’d always thought she might like flying, and when he told Greenfield he could take her up that afternoon, out of Dulles International Airport, she jumped at the chance. She loved the feeling of soaring, of controlling the small plane, of being able to see as far afield as Sugarloaf Mountain to the west, so much she went up twice more that week and did the same for the better part of a year.

She got her license  in a mere four months.

“That’s unusual,” says Finigan. “It shows a real passion for this.”

As she developed her new interest, Greenfield says it never seemed to bother anybody that she was usually the only female at the airfield or at the four contests she usually enters each year. It certainly never bothered her.

“She can be a woman on her own time,” says Finigan with a hearty laugh. “Around here, she’s just one of the guys.”

Greenfield says she’d gladly take you up in her latest airplane – a $50,000, fire engine-red Pitts Special biplane with “Karen” on the side – but can’t, as it’s a mere one-seater. But as Pipers, Cessnas and Pitts Specials chug up and down a Lee Airport runway, taking off for flights across the Chesapeake Bay, she and fellow pilots Finigan and Wes Jones, 50, of Annapolis, offer a verbal tour of their avocation.

Aerobatics “means we’re not going to fly a straight line,” Finegan jokes. More specifically, aerobatic pilots fly different maneuvers such as loops (circles created in vertical space), rolls (rotations of the plane on its axis) and “hammerheads” (flying straight up, turning sharply, and flying straight down again).

At contests, pilots carry out an assigned sequence of such maneuvers, and judges on the ground, eyeballing the figures, assess points to each just as figure-skating judges do for lutzes or triple axels.

Four or more times a year, the pilots fly their planes to contest sites where they must carry out their routines within a specified “box” that measures 3,300 feet by 3,300 feet. (They may fly no lower than 1,500 feet.) Judges award points, with 10 the highest score per figure.

Last month, Greenfield placed second in the Carolina Boogie, percentage points behind Jones in the “sportsman” category.

“It was a razor-thin margin,” says Jones, who flies a factory-built two-seat Pitts Special he says cost him about $230,000 – and which, unlike Greenfield’s, allows the pilot to rotate the propeller to alter the “bite” taken out of the air.

Greenfield says it was the pure love of flying maneuvers that drew her from generic piloting to aerobatics in the mid-1990s. Working largely with Finigan, a retired Navy admiral, she commuted to Lee at least twice a week and, sitting in the forward cockpit of his two-seater, boned up on the basics.

None strikes her as harder to execute than the others, though the violent, downward g-force of loops nauseated her at first.

Today, she especially enjoys hammerheads. “There’s something fun about flying straight down,” Greenfield says.

Melissa Adams, twin sister to Champ owner Melinda Adams, flies out of Lamoni, Iowa (LWD) and is also a tailwheel pilot.

Lori Adams, 81, of  Smithville, Texas flies a 1967 Citabria and has logged 29,000 hours in 55 years.  She continues to fly aerobatics in Smithville.

 

By Andrea Lorenz
AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF

The red-headed pilot takes precautions before she flies the 1967 single-engine Citabria she co-owns with friend and former student Austin Wambler.

She checks the fuel and oil, gives the plane a once-over and never flies in bad weather, except for occasions like two weeks ago at the Smithville Municipal Airport Fly-In, when, despite looming clouds, she gave onlookers a show of airplane aerobatics. On a recent Sunday, she guided the plane in loops, spins and dives for onlookers, moves she’s done for so long they no longer thrill her, but people enjoy them so she continues them.

 

Born the year Charles Lindbergh flew the Spirit of St. Louis in the first solo nonstop trans-Atlantic flight, Adams said she hesitates to share her age lest it deter passengers or students from flying with her. “They’ll see an old woman, and they’ll say, ‘I don’t want to fly with that old grandma.’ ”

 

Bubbly and energetic, when Adams isn’t working her four days a week at Smithville’s Brookshire Brothers petrol station, she’s flying or at the airport.

 

She’s called the Queen of the Airport Bums, according to the group of pilots and airplane aficionados who hang out at the Smithville airport, because she’s the only woman of the bunch.

 

Adams spends many of her weekends there, where she and Wambler keep their plane in a hangar they also own. Sometimes they go for a “$100 hamburger,” pilot-speak for the cost of the fuel it takes to fly to another town for a burger.

 

“This is where she comes into her own,” Wambler said as Adams took off for a solo flight to show off her aerobatic moves. “When she gets into an airplane, she goes into her own world.”

 

Adams began flying in her early 20s, but her interest in aviation started when she was a child in Smithville.

 

“I jumped from the hayloft into the hay,” she said. “I thought I wanted to fly.”

 

In her teens, she tried to join the Women Airforce Service Pilots, who flew military aircraft during World War II, but she was too young.

 

Adams finally had a chance to fly in a plane thanks to acquaintances. She worked as a photographer snapping pictures of patrons at a nightclub, and the band director took her up. Her roommate’s boyfriend gave Adams her first lessons in Dallas in exchange for paying her roommate’s share of the rent for a month: $50.

 

The first time Adams flew alone, in a J-3 Cub, the control stick used to fly the plane from the back seat came off during the flight. She managed to land safely by climbing into the front seat, but the incident scared her.

 

“I quit flying for about a year,” Adams said. “With the stick coming out, I thought the good Lord didn’t want me to fly.”

 

She eventually got back in a plane, obtained her license and moved to Houston. She married Dick Adams along the way. He died in 1960 when his crop-dusting plane went down because it was overloaded. She never remarried.

 

In 1964, Adams opened a flight school at Houston’s Hobby Airport, where she stayed until the 1980s when the airport became too congested to handle small planes. She then retired, returned to her hometown and started giving instructions in Smithville.

 

Although she no longer teaches, with 29,000 flying hours, Adams doesn’t have plans to slow down.

 

Federal Aviation Administration rules require commercial passenger pilots to retire by 65, but there’s no age limit for other pilots as long as they pass regular medical exams.

 

Adams said she will fly “till I die.”

 

“For real,” she said. “You’ll see it someday in the paper. You’ll say, ‘Oh, I knew her.’ But now I’m healthy and I feel good.”

 

Adams said the only trouble she has getting around is caused by a pesky ankle injury she got skydiving; she jumped out of a plane two years ago and caught her foot on the way out — “a freak accident,” she said. And Adams wants another go at skydiving — without the broken ankle.

 

“I want to make a good one,” she said. Citing former President George Bush’s skydiving trips in his 80s, she said, “It’s no big deal.”

 

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This picture of Lori Adams from 1966 was sent by Jerry Griggs, a former line boy for Lori.  (See Comments).  Lori taught Jerry to fly in 1967 and Jerry taught his daughter and her best friend to fly his Aeronca “K” when the girls were 16. They are featured on this website at Janice & Andrea\’s First Solos .

 

 

Lorrie Penner flies a 1974, 150 hp 8KCAB Decathalon out of Red Stewart Airfield in Waynesville, Ohio.  (Identifier 40I)  She’s a private pilot SEL and earned a Glider rating last year.  Lorrie is currently Secretary of IAC Chaper 34, former National IAC Secretary, and has been actively involved with her husband, Gorden Penner, in IAC Chapter 34 for many years.  She and Gordon write the Chapter 34 newsletter and maintain that much visited website.

These shots were all taken June 7, 2009 at the kick off meeting for new IAC chapter based in Kokomo, Indiana.

This is a photo of me with the kids and the Champ from 2003! I did all of my training in the Champ for my Recreational license.  After I got the recreational license, then I worked on my Private license.  The worst part was having to fly a Cessna 150 after having flown a Champ!  What a let down… I was really irritated because it had no feeling to it and my feet felt dead – they were used to working much harder in the Champ.  It thought the Cessna was punishment!

 

This photo is my windy day photo of when I got my recreational pilot’s license. The day I took my check ride, I almost cancelled.  It was quite cold in March that year and about a third of the way through the check ride we got some light snow.  We were close to the Clinton County airport at the time and I was just about to make a decision to land when we came out from under the little snow cloud.  The rest of the flight was uneventful, but I was successful at passing the ride.

This picture is of me and my very good friend, Nancy Wright. Nancy lives in Michigan, but she is an IAC34 member and usually our very excellent volunteer coordinator for the contest.  Nancy has a private pilot license.