Tish on her Field of Dreams(see her article“Flying” below)
Chairman’s Message
By Susan Conner-Steeb
You’ve Got This!
This is my new mantra! Be it straight and level, in formation, inverted or anything in between. Fly with attitude, confidence and passion.
We as Pilots all had a passion that lead us to fly, but sometimes things get in our way. Life happens, times passes, habits form. I totally understand how those little voices start talking louder and louder, challenging confidence as time passes.
For me it is not time between flights. I have had the luxury of flying a lot and in many forms.“My” voice is about flying alone. Almost all of my flying has been with my husband in the right seat or another pilot. The voice in my head amplifies around“Can you do it safely alone?”.
Susan in the cockpit of Dallas Faye
Dallas Faye, as she is known in the Steeb house, is a Bonanza who just got 6 new cylinders. I had the privilege of spending time this spring under the cowling working to make her purr like a kitten. I have close to 300 hours in her as she has taken me to Oshkosh, to formation clinics, back and forth to LA and SF for over 3 years on a weekly basis and much more!
So what is my problem? Why does this voice get louder and louder? I wish I knew ….the gist of it is lack of confidence that I can do it safely on my own. So I have two choices: don’t fly alone, or just do it. I decided on Friday to fly myself to Camarillo to the airshow. It was a flight I knew well. I made a thorough prefight plan, checked weather and headed for the airport. I took a deep breath and started down my checklist. The engine sounded different. I realized we talk a lot in flight so the silence felt different. I checked my scan, got a bit fixated on the panel and reminded myself to relax and enjoy flying. The day was beautiful, the coast was scenic and Dallas Faye was in top shape. It was a beautiful flight. It did wonders for my confidence and my attitude.
The beauty is, in Camarillo, I had the opportunity to talk to other female pilots about those voices. Apparently, I’m not alone. I also had the opportunity to talk with a F-18 pilot who was anxious about his upcoming first landing on an aircraft carrier, a student pilot anxious about mastering weather for her written exam, and a CFI anxious about being confident in multiple aircraft.
My takeaway? Channel these anxieties into action. I spoke with several pilots who believe our little voices make us better pilots. We use those voices to keep us alert and safe but do not allow them to overpower our passion for flight.
Personally, sharing these experiences with you all allows me to put my inner voices into perspective, understand where they come from and use that understanding to help build my confidence. It drives me to learn more, practice more, fly more.
Thank you all for being part of my network. I learn from each of you. We’ve Got This!
Flying
By Tish Allan Jacobs
Flying... I watched the seagulls charging by my window only to change course by turning on a dime, and fly back from where they had just come. Nine years ago, as I watched these adept flyers, I thought,"could I learn to fly at 55 years old? Within minutes, I had called a pilot friend and asked him the same question. Two conversations later, I had scheduled my first flight lesson in San Luis Obispo. When I told my husband, his response was,"Well, it's about time Amelia.""How did you know I wanted to fly? I didn't even know?" He said,"You are like a kid every time we get on an airplane. One would have to be blind not to realize what was coming!"
It took me two years. Although I started my training here in San Luis Obispo, I received my private pilot's certificate in Wisconsin in 2011. As I was preparing for my checkride, I was also grading one of my cornfields on my farm in Wisconsin for a grass field landing strip. Every evening after our neighbor - who was also a pilot - spent hours grading and leveling the field using a 1948 tractor, I would go out on my little lawn tractor and imagine what it would be like to take off from my own airport. After choosing the perfect blend of seed to plant, and of course finishing all the paperwork and licenses, local and federal permits, and hearings, we opened our private airport. Flying with a local flight instructor, we made our first touchdown on Prairie Hill McDaniel Field. When my instructor wrote in my logbook, he said,"First landing at Tishlove international."
The main runway at Tishlove International
Although five years later I had to sell my farm, flying from my own field will always be in my heart and a treasured memory.
Flying continues to be a part of my life back here at my home airport of SBP. I've had a dream of owning my own plane. Maybe one day. But I owned my own airport. And WI50 is still on the charts!
My favorite flight is the course charted by the gulls in front of my home in Cambria, the course that gave me the inspiration to discover the sky!
Oshkosh Adventure
EAA AirVenture Fly-in & Convention
By Janice Odell
This year I decided to fly myself to Oshkosh to fly somewhere far. I recently read a book by Carol Ann describing her flight around the world in her Mooney and I was inspired. Elizabeth Dinan joined me which made me a bit nervous and relieved because she’s a CFI and has been flying forever with thousands of hours. I had better be on my game!
Fog was forecast the morning I was to leave with ceilings above my personal minimum so I moved the Bonanza(35YR) to Paso Robles so we could get the planned early start needed to avoid afternoon heat and thunderstorms. My husband drove Elizabeth and I to the airport and off we went. We stopped at Yerington, Nevada(O43) for fuel then on to Twin Falls(KTWF), Idaho for lunch and fuel. The flight was lovely: clear and smooth with a modest tailwind. Taking off from Twin Falls we got flight following to Rapid City. We watched as build ups in the distance got larger and decided to overnight at Driggs, Idaho(KDIJ) just short of the Wyoming border. We stayed at a funky hotel that was a couple of 100+ year old homesteads that were somehow attached. The owner came and picked us up and gave us the keys to her car to drive to dinner. It was a one street town so we technically didn’t need it but after walking up and down the street, we found nothing open(it was Sunday evening), so we went back for the car and help in finding something open! We finally dined outdoors at a nice Mexican place.
The next day we left early and flew through a couple of 12,000-13,000 peaks in the Grand Tetons which was beautiful. At a fuel stop in Newcastle/Mondell(KECS), Wyoming the FBO owner was fueling my airplane before I could say a thing. He asked if we were on our way to Oshkosh… He was doing blockbuster business that weekend! Next we got flight following to Madison and later got radar vectors to fly by Mount Rushmore from the Ellsworth controller. And we could easily find the monument after finding the huge parking lot nearby.
Madison(KMDS) was a small airport, much smaller than I thought… until I realized that we were still in South Dakota, not the Madison(KMSN) in Wisconsin I had intended. I typed Madison in my iPad, the identifiers are similar and it was in the same direction so I loaded it and we ended up there. I failed to see the state! In the FBO we asked to get a car and help getting a hotel. The two crew cars were already taken but once they figured out we were on our way to Oshkosh, they asked if we’d mind sharing a crew car with a couple also leaving early the next day and on their way to Oshkosh. So we booked the same hotel and went out to an early dinner with them. They were from San Carlos flying in their C-182: an auto mechanic with his own shop and a seamstress, and they were hilarious! We had a terrific time.
The next morning, we flew to Appleton(KATW), 35YR’s home for the next 3 nights. There was a lot of traffic coming in and they ended up parking me in the grass, which I was not happy about. I had called ahead and they said I’d have no problem getting hard a surface tie down but with the IFR weather at Oshkosh, there was a lot more traffic at Appleton than expected. I had to buy a tie down kit and they provided a big mallet to hammer it into the grass and eventually we sorted it out. We got our rental car and drove to the show. We first went to the 99 booth and saw Susan.
Next we got the first of our daily root beer floats and wandered around until the airshow began. The airshow is held daily and is amazing. Incredible aerobatics, formation flights, simulated bombing runs with WW2 bombers and more. That night we attended a 99 appreciation dinner where we met a couple of interesting ladies from Texas. Wednesday was‘woman’s day’ at Oshkosh where we wore our pink T-shirts and joined hundreds of other ladies for a big group photo. It turns out that there were about 1200 women in the photo. That evening, we attended a panel discussion with 7 amazing women pilots from a 3 star general and the only lady fighter pilot scrambled during 9-11 to Tammy Jo Shults, who landed the crippled 737 after its engine blew apart. It was a great discussion about their reasons for flying and their career paths. The night airshow that followed was cancelled due to an incoming thunderstorm and the huge crowd left the grounds in an orderly fashion and we did not get terribly wet before the sky broke loose.
The night airshow was rescheduled for the next night. We left the show to get dinner and ended up locked out as they closed access to the airport. We went down the street and watched with a bunch of locals and their chairs, blankets and a radio listening to the announcer. It wasn’t perfect but we got to see it from about a mile away. It was amazing: aerobatic planes spitting fire and throwing fireworks out; choreographed lit drones dancing in the sky, lit up sky divers all topped off with the biggest, longest, most colorful firework display I have ever seen.
What I have to say about Oshkosh as a first time visitor, it just made me want to FLY. All day long, and into the evenings, I just wanted to go flying.
We departed early on Friday and drove to Appleton to return the car, pay for parking and gas and departed the busy airport. We ended up flying nonstop to Rapid City(KRAP). We had planned to stop for fuel but ended up deciding to get there as soon as possible because the weather was starting to build up. We watched the radar on the iPad and were able to stay VFR. At the FBO they helped us get a hotel and airport shuttle pickup. We wandered around the cute downtown and had a late lunch/early dinner. A thunderstorm with hail expected came in that afternoon causing me to panic and call the FBO hoping to get my airplane in the hangar. They couldn’t move my plane due to lightening on the field… Later that night hail reports were on the news with various towns listing the size of the hail(a quarter, a golf ball or a tennis ball!), fortunately none from Rapid City.
Another early departure back to Twin Falls. We had weather from the north that was slowly moving south but were able to stay VFR, again with the help of Stratus weather and the iPad. We did climb to 12,500 to minimize zigzagging through the mountains. Brunch in Twin Falls then departed for home. Smoke from forest fires kept visibility to 5-10 miles so flew high again to avoid as much as we could and for a better margin over the Sierras, which we crossed over at Lake Tahoe. It was smoky all the way home.
The whole adventure was fantastic and I will go back to Oshkosh next year. Even now that I’m back home, I still just want to go fly.
Susan: spoke about getting to fly in the Bonanza caravan; over 140 Bonanzas flying in 3-aircraft formations, 15 seconds between formations!. She was the only female pilot of the bunch.
Chairman’s Message
Flying
Oshkosh Adventure
Minutes of General Meeting (8/1/18)