Women Can Fly at HWY 2017

I'll apologize in advance; I probably won't be able to update this quite as often for a little while. My laptop is broken; after years of hauling it everywhere, one of the hinges starting crying uncle. Mark patched it up to make it last a bit longer, but I'm trying to limit how often I open and close it, so no more editing posts on my breaks at work for now. I'm hoping to get a replacement soon, but between a broken airplane and a possible government shutdown next month (which might mean I don't get paid on time for a while), it doesn't make financial sense to replace it right now. Oh well, can't win them all.

Back in June, we had our annual Women Can Fly event. This was my second year as event coordinator, and man, was it a lot easier now that I actually had a clue of how to put it all together! I lucked out and had a ton of pilots volunteer to fly, so instead of shutting down registration early like last year, I just let it go and figured it would be fun to see what we could do. I also got smart this year and was able to take the day before the event off from work, too, which was a huge help with getting things set up.

Zach came down the day before to help. Between me, Dave, and Zach, we were able to get my hangar set up for the preflight briefings and get a lot of the other supplies in place for the next morning.

That was about as much as we could set up the day before, especially since it was drizzly. We were out of there with enough time to grab dinner, hang out for a bit, and for me to stare at the forecast for a while. It didn't look the greatest, and I was starting to hit the point where I would be happy if we could get any flying in at all.

The alarm went off early the next morning, Zach and I grabbed breakfast, and we drove over to the airport. We jumped right into setup, and a few small hiccups later, got everything set up and on track.

This picture doesn't do the pilot safety briefing justice; every seat was filled, people were sitting on the floor, and a bunch of people were standing off to the side. We wound up with 29 pilots by the end of the day!

Remember how I was worried about the weather forecast?

...this was what we woke up to. Somehow the weather system moved through overnight and it was absolutely gorgeous that morning. The ramp was packed with planes that would be flying for the event, and shortly after 9:30am, the first flight took off. We were up and running!   :)

We were able to get some more static displays this year and had them set up between the two main event hangars. The helicopter school at Manassas had one of their R22s open and they were letting people sit in it, which was especially cool.

One of the best parts of the day came early in the afternoon; we were able to raffle off a ride in a HondaJet! My hangar neighbors had just received their brand new HondaJet a couple days before the event and generously donated a flight in it for the day. Five lucky girls got to go for a ride, and thanks to my buddies at work, got a really sweet tour of northern VA, Maryland, and DC. You can just see the jet taxing back in on the far right side of the picture.

I spent most of the day running around like crazy, trying to keep things running smoothly, but at one point when I was up on the flightline they grabbed me and told me to go ride left seat in the R44. I wasn't about to turn that down!

We spent a few extra minutes on the ground so our photographer could get some event pictures, then our pilot lifted off and we headed south.

I couldn't resist a selfie.   :)

We made a big loop a few miles south of the airport. I always love helicopter rides; there's something about buzzing along a few hundred feet off the ground that's just plain cool. We eventually looped back to the airport and landed.

The event started to wind down shortly after I got back on the ground, and we eventually got everything wrapped up and cleaned up. There had been a few small hiccups through the day, but nothing major, and most importantly, everyone stayed safe. Our volunteers did an amazing job, and by the end of the day 29 pilots had given 218 total rides. We absolutely shattered our previous record.   :)

Of course, that meant I had plenty of fun paperwork to organize after it was all said and done. I'll take it, though! Bacon seemed like a willing helper at first, but disappeared after a couple minutes.

I was too busy to take many pictures through the day, but our event photographer, Alex Hrapunov, did a beautiful job with event photos. He volunteers his time and generously donates the picture for us to use for promotional purposes. If you'd like to see some of his pictures (which gives a much better view of what the event is really like), you can see them here . He does a great job...we're lucky to have him and all of our volunteers! I've already told everyone that I'm going to keep putting this event together until they tell me to knock it off, so I'm looking forward to seeing what we can accomplish next year.   :)