F/A-18 getting ready for the show at the Santa Maria Air Fest(October 16)
The mission of The Ninety-Nines is to promote the advancement of aviation through education, scholarships, and mutual support while honoring their unique history and shared passion for flight.
Letter from the Chair
By Dana Davis
Happy Fall! It’s hard to believe October is almost over, and just around the corner is the new year. At the beginning of the month, I had the pleasure of attending the Fall Southwest Section Meeting in Salt Lake City, Utah with Anele Brooks, Janice Odell, and Susan Steeb. It was a great opportunity to learn what’s happening in other chapters, at International, and to have fun with and be inspired by fellow pilots. Janice flew Susan and me to the meeting and back in her V-tail Bonanza. I always marvel at how much you can learn flying with other pilots, and this year I have experienced so much generosity from other pilots’ willingness to share their skills, experiences, and adventures with me.
My husband(he’s not a pilot, yet) and I have just returned from two weeks on the road. Or two weeks in the skies? We took a wonderful flying vacation to visit our daughter in Seattle. And to stop and check out RVs since Tim(the aforementioned husband), thinks we need a faster airplane, and he wants to build one for me. After a go around on the first pass at Lenhardt Airpark(7S9) outside Portland, we landed and sat in a beautiful RV9 the owner is selling to make room for the almost complete RV10. We really enjoyed chatting with the pilot we met, and he gave us a great little book with information on all the Oregon airports. If I lived there, I would be checking off the airports, one by one! After a quick hop over to Portland-Troutdale, skirting under the Class Charlie airspace(this was a really fun airport to fly into, right along the Columbia River), we met a couple who were selling their partially built RV10. There are A LOT of rivets in an RV. They’ve been riveting since 2014... The next day we toured the Van’s factory in Aurora and got to fly in and test the controls on the original RV10—it was even sportier than my Cheetah, and a lot faster! I learned that I am pretty fond of my six pack and steam gauges. I definitely experienced the instrument“stare” that comes with the transition to a glass cockpit. After lots of data gathering, I’m not sure if I’m ready for an upgrade yet. I guess it’s time for more training, perhaps in the simulator, to get up to speed on a faster plane, learn more about how to fly with a constant speed prop, and gain a comfort level with a glass cockpit. There’s never a dull moment or nothing more to learn as a pilot!
As we embark on the new year, the SLO 99s are looking to you, our members, to provide some feedback, via a survey, of what direction you would like our group to take. I sent out a survey this week via email(I found mine in my Spam folder) with 15 quick questions to help us set our course for the next few years. Below is a link to the survey. Please take a few minutes to complete it so we can focus our efforts on programming that interests and benefits our members.
A few dates to get on your calendar, the holiday party is scheduled for December 9, and we will deliver cookies to the Tower on December 10. I’ll look forward to seeing you all at the November 2nd meeting and hearing about your flying adventures.
See you at the airport,
Dana
Please take a few minutes to complete the SLO 99s Chapter Flight Plan Survey:
Google Meet joining info upcoming via mailing list
September Fly-Out to Harris Ranch(9/24)
By Dana Davis
Dana & Tim Davis, Theresa Theiler, Grace Crittenden, and Elizabeth Dinan flew to Harris Ranch for lunch on the September fly-out
Dana landing her Grumman Cheetah(photo by Grace)
On the flight back from lunch, we unexpectedly saw the launch of the Delta IV Heavy Rocket with Top Secret NROL-91 Payload at Vandenberg. First we saw the exhaust plume near the ground, then the rocket trail, and after we could see the rocket continue on. Exciting to watch.
Jan Dungan’s Back
By Grace Crittenden
Jan
I was happily surprised to see Jan Dungan’s name on our membership list with a current phone number. She was a member of our chapter when I first started flying in 2002. I wrote an article about her then and called her recently to catch up on what she is doing now. She is just back from Australia.
Jan is an adventurer. She has always been ready to take the road less traveled and open to new opportunities.
She spent the first half of her life in Australia working as an artist and waiting tables. At age 29 she started to get restless and headed to Bali with an import-export business. Her travels expanded and soon she was living in England.
On one of her trips from Australia to England she sat next to an air traffic controller. Their conversation lead from one thing to another, and they got to talking about flying. She had never really thought about being a pilot until he told her that England was a good place to learn to fly. The idea stayed with her, and when she got back to England, she took a demo flight."I loved it straight away." Learning to fly was a joy when she had someone in the right seat but when she had her first solo and she was to go practice maneuvers away from the airport, she was terrified. On returning to the flight school, she announced that she was not cut out to be a pilot and that she was going to quit. A woman instructor overheard her and invited her to come back to her office to talk to her whereupon she sat Jan down and poured her a gin and tonic. After their little tet-a-tet, she was able to come back and ultimately finished her private pilot license without a problem.
She heard that America was a good place to get more training and so she moved to Fort Worth to continue her training. Jan’s very first job as a pilot when she was in training in Texas was ferrying a Mooney to Germany. She describes the trip as terrifying and wonderful. Each day she was sure she was going to die flying over the North Atlantic and then gloried in her survival. Throughout her career, she has ferried planes world-wide. She was caught up in the process of earning her ratings and becoming a CFI. She loved to teach flying and earned 4000 hours as a CFI. With her understanding of fear, she had special skills working with those challenging students.
By then flying was her life, but it was too hot for her in Texas, so she found a job teaching in Santa Monica. It was there that she first joined the Ninety-Nines. Her first commercial job was flying Grand Canyon tours. When she heard from a friend that a small airline was hiring in San Luis Obispo, she hired on with Wings West. She stayed on when they were bought out by American Eagle.
She was always an artist. Whenever she was in the cockpit, she had her camera with her and has taken many wonderful pictures.
Letter from the Chair
SLO 99s Monthly Meeting
September Fly-Out to Harris Ranch (9/24)
Jan Dungan’s Back