99s Members: Doris Abbate

Doris Abbate decided to learn to fly in 1959, following in the footsteps of her husband, Ronald, who had earned his pilot's license.She had four children (three toddlers and an infant) before learning to fly.

She took lessons in a J3 Piper Cub at Zahns Airport in Amityville, Long Island. She earned her private pilot's license in 1960, flying her ownTripacer. (She would go on to earn her commercial, instrument and instrument ground instructor ratings.).

She joined the Long Island chapter of the 99s in 1961. Over the years she served as Treasurer of the Chapter, and chaired several committees.

She was a contestant on the All Woman Transcontinental Air Races (AWTAR, aka Powder Puff Derby) between 1961 and 1967. One of her most exciting experiences was when she earned the Tail End Tony Award in the 1964 race. She had to make two emergency landings in the race, and still finished the race within deadline. She was honored with a medal for a safe forced landing.

She also participated in the Air Race Classic and the Garden State 300, took first place in the USPFT New England REgional, and advanced to the USPFT National Finals in 1985.P> Also in 1985, she served as the judge for the World Precision Flight Championship and the US Precision Flight Team. Bibliography
History of the Ninety-Nines, Inc.: 1929-1979, published 1979
The Ninety-Nines: Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow, published 1996

PR: Wicks Aircraft Offers Variety of New Products

Order now; pick up at Oshkosh Wicks Aircraft Supply, located in the heart of the Lower 48, has a great selection of new products that you’ll be able to see at Oshkosh in July – and take home. If you order ahead, you will be assured that you will have these goodies to take home with you. · 406mHz ELT from ACK: This new, GPS-capable unit also operates on 121.5 mHz, and is light weight (1.6 pounds, with 5-year battery). Featuring a full “plug & play” installation kit, dual-stainless strap mounting, and antenna, this ELT includes antenna and has one of the lowest battery replacement costs in the industry and comes with a two-year warranty. $600, tax incl. · Aeroleds Pulsar newly-TSO’d NSP & NS strobes: These 4-inch long, anodized aluminum-based 4-ounce strobes provide brilliant LED light in red or green. The NS consumes 18 watts for its 22 LEDs; the NSP is a 20-watt unit, and contains 24 LEDs. NS $1,075 pr. Tax incl., NSP $1,1 00 pr. Tax incl. · Aeroleds Suntail: This TSO’d tail strobe/position light pulls 16 watts to light its 18 LEDs, using its built-in power supply. With an anodized aluminum base, this 3-ounce light has a rated life of 50,000 hours. $320 experimental, $475 TSO’d · Aeroleds Sunspot: This high intensity Landing and Taxi lights use 20 watts; the HX can be PMA’d for certified aircraft. $430 HX landing or taxi. All the above Aeroleds units operate on 9-36VDC. · Aerovoltz 4, 8, 12, and 16-cell 13.6V batteries: Powerful, yet amazingly lightweight, these multi-cell lithium batteries can crank most any Experimental, with engines from tiny two-strokes to even 580-inch sixes. With a service life of more than double that of a typical lead-acid battery, Aerovoltz can be used in any orientation, require no ventilation, and never leak. Even better: amp for amp, Aerovoltz can save up to 80% of the space and 90% of the weight, compared against traditional batteries.

Elsie MacGill Northern Lights Award Honors 2012 Winners

From Weather.Aviation.ca:  Elsie MacGill Northern Lights Award Honors 2012 Winners

The Elsie MacGill Northern Lights (EMNL) Award program is honouring its 2012 winners. The prestigious award is named after aviation pioneer Elsie MacGill who had a pivotal role in the design and production of the Hawker Hurricane in Canada during the Second World War, earning her the title, "Queen of the Hurricanes." MacGill was the first Canadian woman to graduate with a degree in electrical engineering and the first woman in North America to earn an advanced degree in aeronautics.

The national award program, recently incorporated as the Northern Lights Award Foundation, was established in 2009 to recognize the outstanding achievements of women in aviation and aerospace in Canada. Since its inception, the award has grown from one to four award categories that now include: Flight Operations/Maintenance; Business; Government; and Rising Star. Hailing from all across Canada, the 2012 winners have roots in New Brunswick, Quebec, Ontario, and British Columbia.

Flight Operations/Maintenance Award
Regina (Gina) Jordan is the recipient of the Flight Operations/Maintenance Award. Born in 1929 in New Brunswick near the present day Saint John Airport, Jordan has retired from professional flying. She accumulated over 17,000 hours of flight in her long and accomplished aviation career which included owning her own flight school in Calgary, flying oil rig workers throughout northern Alberta and Saskatchewan as a corporate pilot, and flying for the Mission Aviation Fellowship (MAF) as a missionary pilot in Africa, the second woman ever to do so. She was also a director of MAF from 1996 until 2001.

During her years as a flight instructor, Jordan mentored thousands of student pilots, many who continued on to become career pilots. She was also the first woman in Canada to earn an Airline Transport Rating. After retirement from professional flying, Jordan returned to her roots in New Brunswick where she was actively involved with CASARA (Civil Air Search and Rescue Association) for many years. She currently lives in New Brunswick.

Government Award
Mary Ellen Pauli is the recipient of the EMNL Government Award. Pauli was born and raised in northern Quebec. Her father was a career pilot who flew Lancasters in World War II. Earning her helicopter licence at Fredericton Helicopters Ltd. in New Brunswick in 1979, Pauli persevered in a male dominated industry to secure employment with Trans Quebec Helicopters (TQH) in 1980, flying in and out of mining bush camps from its Matagami base. Subsequently, she became base manager at Trans Canada Helicopters for two years before flying as a rotation pilot on the James Bay Hydro Project.

In 1986, Pauli became one of the first helicopter pilots employed by the Ontario government, flying for the Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources (OMNR) in its newly acquired helicopter fleet. Until recently, she was the only female permanent staff pilot in the 85 year history of the OMNR.

Pauli’s hard work and determination has earned her many accolades in her career including an Outstanding Service Award in 1988 for her help in the great Canadian ice storm, the P.R.I.D.E. Award from MNR in 2004 for her projects on James Bay, and the Governor General of Canada's Commendation Award for the rescue of persons in August of 2004 on the Hudson's Bay Coast. She was also inducted into the Canadian Bushplane Heritage Centre in Sault Ste Marie as part of its Women in Aviation Display. Pauli offers strong encouragement to all women who care to follow in her footsteps saying, “where there’s a will, there’s a way.” An accomplished musician, Pauli lives in Timmins.

Business Award
Nicole Saulnier is the winner of the EMNL Business Award. Saulnier is co-owner, chief pilot and operations manager of Georgian Bay Airways (GBA) in Parry Sound, Ontario, currently in its tenth season of operations.
After receiving a diploma in advertising from Georgian College and working her way up the corporate ladder, Saulnier realized that flying float planes was her true calling. She has logged thousands of hours flying the de Havilland Beaver in northern Ontario, B.C.’s west coast and over the 30,000 islands of Georgian Bay.
Leaving the nomadic life of a bush pilot behind, Saulnier ended up flying as chief pilot with a floatplane operation in Parry Sound, Ont. When the opportunity arose, Nicole and her husband bought the base and started a new floatplane operation where Saulnier has worked tirelessly to grow and transform Georgian Bay Airways into a thriving business that today employs 20.

Nicole acts as a mentor to women in new businesses. For the past five years she has been the 1st vice-president with the Parry Sound Area Chamber of Commerce and she has been asked to be the president in 2013. She also sits on numerous community and regional tourism and marketing boards. Her career tips for women in aviation are: don’t take no for an answer; never give up; set a goal and do what it takes to get there; don’t doubt your abilities; you can have a career and family, it just requires less sleep and more determination to follow your head, not your heart.

Rising Star Award
Erika Kangas is the recipient of the Rising Star Award. Kangas grew up in northern British Columbia and Sudbury, Ontario. Moving to Toronto to attend the Aerospace Engineering program at Ryerson University, Kangas was selected to be a participant in the Ryerson Institute for Aerospace Design and Innovation (RIADI) program. In 2006 she worked as a summer intern in the Engineering department at Pratt & Whitney Canada and the following two years her summer internships were spent at Bombardier Aerospace. In her final year at Ryerson, she was elected as student chairperson for RIADI, and after completing her degree in Aerospace Engineering, Kangas was hired by Bombardier.

As a member of the Graduate Development Program at Bombardier, Kangas has worked with a variety of engineering groups including, Liaison, Airworthiness, Flight Test and Mechanical Systems. Working as a flight test engineer for the Bombardier Q400 program, she participated in many test programs; earlier this year, she was the flight test engineer on board the first biofuel flight in Canada. Kangas is involved in many voluntary programs at Bombardier including the Children’s Activity which encourages youth to learn and pursue aviation and engineering related interests. Kangas is currently working towards her Canadian Private Pilot Licence.

Past winners of the Elsie MacGill Northern Lights Award include Heather Sifton, former president and CEO of the Buttonville Municipal Airport; Kathy Fox, retired VP operations for Nav Canada and currently an appointed member of the Transportation Safety Board; and Roberta Taylor, an aviation trailblazer and social activist who now teaches at the University of Victoria.

The 2012 Award recipients will be honoured at a gala ceremony and dinner on September 28 at The School restaurant in Unionville, Ontario.

To read the full bios of these four extraordinary women, and to learn more about the Northern Lights Award Foundation, visit http://www.northernlightsaward.ca

JU women fliers compete in the wake of Amelia Earhart

From Jacksonville.com:  JU women fliers compete in the wake of Amelia Earhart

When Team Snoopy and Team Red Baroness take to the air at 8 a.m. today (Monday, June 18) in the 2012 Air Race Classic, they will be flying in an 83-year-old tradition that started with pilots like Louise Thaden and Amelia Earhart.

They also hope to repeat what Sarah Morris and Leah Hetzel did a year ago, when they became the first Jacksonville University team to beat 54 others in the historic all-women transcontinental national air race.
JU's teams will fly 2,641 miles over four days, from Lake Havasu City Airport in Arizona to Clermont County Airport in Batavia, Ohio.

Team Red Baroness is 18-year-old pilot Katja Jourdan and 20-year-old copilot Renee Brilhante, both undergraduates in the aviation program at JU's Davis College of Business. Flying a Cirrus SR-2, Jourdan said they decided to compete to "see the country from another prospective" after flight training in Florida. And like the pilots of old, they will have to fly by the seat of their pants during parts of the race.

"We will not be filing an instrument flight plan, so we will not rely on air traffic control to go from one place to another," Jourdan said. "And we have fly-bys at all of our airports that range from 200 to 400 feet off the ground, and that will be a lot of fun. It is so the judges can start and stop our times."

Team Snoopy is pilot Juliana Vazquez, 24, and co-pilot Heather Meyer, 32, both aviation program graduates, also flying a Cirrus SR-2. Flying in the wake of last year's winners as well as a 2010 JU team in the collegiate class, Meyer said she is competing for the love of flying.

"Racing is something I have always wanted to do and I love to fly anything," Meyer said. "And I have aspirations and want to do anything from aerobatics to helicopters, and anything I can do to bring awareness to female pilots is good. They can do just as well."

The Air Race Classic is dedicated to encouraging and educating women pilots. Its history dates to 1929, when Thaden won against 19 other pilots including Earhart in the First Women's Air Derby from Santa Monica to Cleveland. This week's race will see 57 teams compete in single- and twin-engine airplanes, with stops in New Mexico, Texas, Kansas, Nebraska, Wisconsin and Michigan.

"We will have more up-to-date aircraft than back then, but it is all based off that, and we are at least living in their honor," Jourdan said.

 

China sends its first female astronaut into space

From DNAIndia : China sends its first female astronaut into space

Liu Yang, a pilot in the People's Liberation Army, has made history by becoming the first Chinese woman to go into space.

The 33 year-old is among the three member crew of the Shenzhou 9 mission, the latest step in China's increasingly ambitious space programme.

As a child Liu Yang's earliest ambition was to be a bus conductor, so she could get to travel on the bus every day. But yesterday (Saturday) she was travelling at several times the speed of sound aboard a Long March rocket.

The Shenzhou 9 mission, which blasted off from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Centre in the remote northwest of China yesterday evening, is a crucial test for China's rapidly-evolving space programme. The ten-day mission will see the Shenzhou 9 spacecraft perform the first manned docking with the Tiangong-1 space lab, a vital step towards China's ambition to have a working space station by 2020.

But it was the presence of Major Liu among the three-member crew that dominated the build-up to Saturday's launch, the fourth manned mission China has sent into space since its first in 2003. Formally introduced to the Chinese people at a televised press conference on Friday, Major Liu has become China's newest national heroine. She is the top subject of discussion on Weibo, the Chinese version of Twitter, with a staggering 33 million posts greeting the announcement that she was to be the first Chinese woman in space.

A communist party member known for giving rousing patriotic speeches, Major Liu has not disappointed her millions of new fans, saying at Friday's press conference how she "yearned to gaze upon the motherland" from space. "I am grateful to the motherland and the people. I feel honoured to fly into space on behalf of hundreds of millions of female Chinese citizens," said Major Liu.

Married, a requirement for all of China's female astronauts, with a passion for cooking and now resident in Beijing, Major Liu has enjoyed a dizzying rise, having only been selected to join the astronaut programme two years ago. Born and raised in Zhengzhou, the capital of central Henan Province, she has been described as a diligent and quiet schoolgirl who enjoyed playing volleyball.

Enrolling in the air force in 1997, Major Liu trained to be a transport plane pilot in Changchun, in the northeastern province of Jilin. Named as a 'model pilot' by the PLA in 2010, she first demonstrated her coolness under pressure in 2003 by safely landing a plane after its right engine had been disabled when it was struck by birds soon after take-off.

Major Liu is the 56th woman to go into space. Her role will be to run the scientific experiments set be to be carried out during the mission.

Shenzhou 9 is expected to dock with the experimental Tiangong-1 space lab in around two days. Major Liu and her two male companions will then spend a week aboard the cramped module. At some point, they will disengage Shenzhou 9 from the space lab and then re-dock it manually. China must master such techniques if it is to achieve its goal of building its own space station by 2020.

 

PR: Flying Musicians receive Grant from Wolf Aviation Fund

June 15, 2012: Fort Worth, TX: The Flying Musicians Association is proud to accept a partial grant from the Wolf Aviation Fund for Focus on the Future, a joint venture with FAPA.aero.

The Flying Musicians Association has received a partial grant from the Wolf Aviation Fund to grow Focus on the Future, a student program held at the FAPA.aero Global Pilot Career Conference & Job Fairs and the Regional Airline Pilot Job Fairs around the country.  John Zapp, co-founder of FMA, said, “We are grateful for the Wolf Fund grant and will continue to search for additional funding of this worthwhile program.  FMA is positive others will step up to support Focus on the Future once they see the benefit to youth and the future of aviation.”

Focus on the Future sessions are for aspiring aviators.  If you're a future pilot and actively looking for an aviation university or flight school, attend the conference for free and meet with representatives from the best schools in the U.S. Learn from the pros about the projected need for new pilots, financing your education or flight training and developing a rational career plan.  Parents, guardians, and school counselors are welcome to attend with the student and should also register.  Register for the June 30^th Chicago event at www.FAPA.aero/jobs. Two round trip tickets on Delta Airlines are being raffled to students who register.

About Wolf Aviation Fund:

The Wolf Aviation Fund was established in the wills of Alfred L. and Constance C. Wolf. Its activities are supervised by a board of trustees, aided by a council of advisors and a team of consultants.  "The Foundation shall promote and support the advancement of personal air transportation by seeking and funding the most promising individuals and worthy projects which advance the field of general aviation; by increasing the public's knowledge of aviation through publications, seminars, and other information media; by informing the aviation and scientific community of the existence and purpose of the Fund; and by soliciting and receiving feedback concerning Foundation-supported projects."

More: www.wolf-aviation.org

About the Flying Musicians Association:

The Flying Musicians Association, Inc. is a 501(c)3 non-profit corporation that took off in 2009 by blending two passions: flying and music.  FMA members have been very busy providing music at major aviation events, creating college chapters, while inspiring youth (& adults) to consider the aviation industry as a vocation or avocation.  The mission of the organization: “Pilot Musicians sharing their passion while encouraging and educating youth (& adults) in the science and art of aeronautics and music.”
More: www.FlyingMusicians.org

'Hero’ pilot as China’s space woman?

From the Times of India: Hero’ pilot as China’s space woman? BEIJING: Successful childbirth was one of the criteria that went into selecting female pilots, one of whom will make the journey in China's first manned flight into space in mid-June. One of the two selected astronauts is already a public heroine for having successfully handled a mid-air emergency.

They were selected out of a group of 15 women, who were initially shortlisted on the basis of several qualities including natural child birth, according to Space International magazine under the China Academy of Space Technology. Other criteria include absence of scars and body odour.

One of the two will be chosen for the space journey. Both are transport pilots with the People's Liberation Army Air Force. Natural childbirth is a sign that shows mature physical and mental condition, according to Xu Xianrong, a professor with the General Hospital of the PLA Air Force. The chosen pilots must also be married and living with their spouses because they need interpersonal skills to live in space with male colleagues.

The two female astronauts, both 33, have been picked out of nine pilots who had been selected for their flying skills and psychological strength. They include Captain Wang Yaping from Shandong province and Major Liu Yang from Henan province.

The identities of two male crew members have not been revealed. The PLA said on Saturday it will announce the names of the crew closer to the take off of Shenzhou-9 manned spacecraft, which will dock with Tiangong-1 spacecraft. Liu Yang was once caught in a dangerous situation when her plane hit 18 pigeons. The plane's windshield splattered with blood and the cockpit was filled with burning smell. She managed to stabilize the aircraft and made a successful emergency landing 11 minutes after the incident.

Pang said candidates without scars were shortlisted because a scar might open and start bleeding in space and the cramped conditions would intensify body odour.