Up, Up and Away!

My flight instructor.

Now it can be told: when I started this new job, 40 miles northwest of my home, I decided to take advantage of the opportunity to study for my pilot's license. As of today, I've been given the go-ahead to enter an elite training program that prepares pilots to operate vintage aircraft at air shows and other venues.

After a period of apprenticeship at the Pima Air and Space Museum (one of my favorite places in Tucson!), I hope to qualify as a pilot on a B-17, the same kind of bomber on which my dad was a navigator in World War II for seven missions before going down over Czechoslovakia in a sabotaged plane.  Exciting, huh?

So far, I've only flown a Hawker and a Falcon, but my instructor is very encouraged. I must say I'm rather proud of myself.


Even if I don't end up in the B-17, Tucsonans may well see a vintage plane in the sky at the air show next March, with me in the cockpit!

Karen

ETA: What the pictures are, really:

1. The pilot of one of the two airplanes owned by First Magnus, July 2007. Almost exactly a month before the company collapsed, the accounting department made a field trip out to the hanger where the two planes, a Hawker and a Falcon, were housed.
2. My dad at the Pima Air and Space Museum, January 2011.
3. One of the First Magnus planes, July 2007. It's probably the Dassault Falcon.
4. A grouping of planes from the annual "Heritage Flight" in Tucson, flying over my house several years ago.