RHS99s Heather and Dani have been trying to schedule a flight to breakfast for about 3 years and finally made it happen. Here they are at the Columbia Airport!

Dani, her husband M., Heather and J.

Departing Columbia Airport. On the right side of the grass strip, about half way down, is an amazing airplane camping spot!

As some of you may know, our new Chairman Rhonda is an amazing artist. Here is some of her work she’s prepared for Oshkosh!

Congrats to Angela who earned her Private Pilot Airman Certificate!!!

The RHS 99s and their families met on July 9th for an BBQ and very short meeting in which we officially welcomed Rhonda as our new Chairman, and thanked Heather for leading us there last two years. Officers were gifted with prints of Amelia Earhart, Bess Coleman, and a small piece of wall art with an Amelia Earhart quote.

The best part of the day however, was spending time together talking aviation, checking out Heather’s and Laura’s respective planes, and eating some delicious food.

Many thanks to Heather for hosting our BBQ in her hanger, and double thanks for Laura for bringing her strawberry pretzel salad again. If you haven’t had it, trust me, it’s delicious and worth every single calorie.

Sometimes the most interesting things happen at the “after party”, and our BBQ was no exception. With three remaining couple wrapping things up, it came up that Heather’s inflatable pilot/plane Santa was broken. This of course necessitated it being taken out, examined, partially disassembled, analyzed and finally reassembled after it was determined that a fuse needed to be replaced. Naturally the fuse and replacement fuse were located in the plug, making the disassembly and reassembly unnecessary but hilarious. The important part of this story however is that this Christmas, make sure to drive by Heather’s to see Santa flying in her front yard! (PS, in case you didn’t know it, Heather LOVES Christmas).

Members Ashley and Dani coincidentally met while crewing for a mutual balloon pilot! There’s no better way to spend a morning than around beautiful balloons!

Ashley and Dani

Crewing for Wolf Spirit

June 24, 2023 Truckee Air Show

From Rhonda DeGarmo:

”Went flying with Craig Ekberg leader of Tiger Squadron practice flight. They practiced formation, we did rolls, loops and low level flying 100 feet over ocean. Saw a pod of over 100 dolphins swimming. So fricking cool”

Beautiful photo from Christine

Thanks to our social director, Tara, for arranging a dinner! We met on Sunday at Mimi’s.

Rhonda, Laura, Tara, and Grace

Tara snapped this photo of Ann on the 17th!

This weekend Dani and her husband tried to pop down to the Taildragger in Minden for a late lunch. Unfortunately, no lunch after 2pm. Ominous clouds and weather motivated them to hustle to Reno where they parked just in time to miss the hail storm!

Dani and her hubby

Weather around Minden

Parked in safely in the Hanger just before it started hailing!!!

Rhonda went soaring!

Dani and her husband picked up a friend in Concord and flew to Monterey for lunch!

From Rhonda DeGarmo

I attended this event last night. It was awesome. What a great speaker. So interesting to hear stories about the space shuttle program.

One of our past Chairmen, Leah, took advantage of some excellent flying weather on Friday and did some touch and go’s in Carson. If I was out flying Friday, I would have a smile like Leah’s too!! Hope you’re getting out there and flying as well!!

Our Esteemed Chair Heather was flying for work and had this to say….

I flew a passenger into Augusta, Georgia for the Masters Golf Tournament last week. Not sure if anyone here is a golf fan but it was absolutely crazy. A sea of business jets lining the entire length of a taxiway and runway. It took almost four hours to get fuel and they charged us $2000 ramp fee.

This time, Staci has earned her Instrument Rating!! Congrats Staci!!

From Heather:

I had a long overnight in Washington, DC and toured the Stephen F Udvar-Hazy center, which is a part of the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum. It is giant hanger like facility that had many historical aircraft and spacecraft. Walking in you are faced looking at the nose of a blackbird SR – 71, which is in my opinion is one of the coolest looking airplanes out there. I was fascinated to see the Enola Gay, a B-29 Superfortress. It was eerie to think about it being the plane that dropped the first atomic weapon on Hiroshima. The other fascinating exhibit was John Glenn’s Mercury capsule, Friendship 7. Simply amazing to see how small it was.

 If anyone ever heads out  East, I would definitely make this museum a definite must see.