Latest / The Flyboy Podcast / The Flyboy Podcast: Guest Stefanie "SixGuns" Sanford

Transcript

The Flyboy Podcast: Guest Stefanie "SixGuns" Sanford · The Flyboy Podcast

• 0:09
  SPEAKER_02: Welcome to the Flyboy Podcast, where we bring you just one thing: cool flying stories.
• 0:14
  SPEAKER_02: I'm your host, David Moore, and today I'll be talking with a very special guest, Stephanie Sixguns Sanford.
• 0:21
  SPEAKER_02: Stephanie has demonstrated remarkable courage in the skies over Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Wyoming, Hawaii, and British Columbia.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_02: Over the past 18 years and more than 100 flying sorties, she has voluntarily put her life and limb at risk to fly with me.
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_02: During those years, we have flown a variety of small aircraft, including the DA twenty, the DA forty, the DA forty two all Diamond Series aircraft, as well as various Cessna and Cirrus aircraft.
• 0:51
  SPEAKER_02: I'm grateful that she has agreed to join us today to talk about many of the same topics our other guests have addressed on the Flyboy Podcast, including white knuckle flying through bad weather, in flight emergencies, and other memorable experiences in the sky.
• 1:05
  SPEAKER_02: So with that, six guns, welcome to the podcast.
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_00: It's great to be here.
• 1:09
  SPEAKER_02: So do you remember the first time we flew together?
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_00: I do.
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_00: We didn't know each other very well then.
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_00: We were both in a fellowship program and we had an opportunity to fly a simulator.
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_00: And in our group of 18, uh there were, I get what, two, three pilots.
• 1:23
  SPEAKER_00: And uh so each of us kind of wanted to be with the ringer because we were a little bit nervous about how it would go, even though it was only a simulator.
• 1:29
  SPEAKER_02: Do you remember what kind of simulator it was?
• 1:31
  SPEAKER_00: It was F-14 Tomcat.
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_00: All I know is that what we were supposed to be doing was we were going to we were getting ready to go tour an aircraft carrier.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_00: And so we were going to be in a simulator to figure out what it was like to actually land on one.
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_00: And so being the gracious pilot and instructor that you were, you said, you take the handle.
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_00: And so we're coming in for a landing and we see it.
• 1:51
  SPEAKER_00: And then and I kind of misjudged it just a little bit.
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_00: Just a little bit.
• 1:55
  SPEAKER_00: Just a little bit.
• 1:55
  SPEAKER_00: I think I came in kind of hot.
• 1:57
  SPEAKER_00: And not only did I miss landing on the carrier, I missed it by so far that we actually ended up under it.
• 2:03
  SPEAKER_02: Underwater.
• 2:03
  SPEAKER_02: And what did we see?
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_00: The underside of the carrier.
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_02: So we saw the underside of the carrier.
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_02: So we flew underneath the aircraft carrier in the simulator.
• 2:11
  SPEAKER_02: This was at Naval Air Station Oceana in Virginia, right before we went out to the actual aircraft carrier.
• 2:17
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I believe that was my first and my last experience myself.
• 2:21
  SPEAKER_00: I believe you said then I'll take the stick.
• 2:24
  SPEAKER_02: Good news is we survived.
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_02: We survived.
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_02: So most of the flying that we've done together have been in Diamond Series aircraft.
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_02: Can you give people a sense of what those airplanes are like?
• 2:34
  SPEAKER_02: Put us in the cockpit.
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, they're very different.
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_00: The the DA-20 is kind of like a it's like a flying Miata.
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, it really is like a little bitty car with wings.
• 2:44
  SPEAKER_00: You get up in it, climb in, and put it, and there's like two seats and not even really room for luggage.
• 2:49
  SPEAKER_00: You've room for your purse in the back.
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_00: I think they advertise it that way.
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_00: Room for your purse in the back.
• 2:53
  SPEAKER_00: And uh and it really bounces around.
• 2:55
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, you take off down the runway and it's like very, very, very tiny.
• 3:02
  SPEAKER_00: So I was glad when we moved up to the it was the DA 40.
• 3:05
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_00: And that one is a single engine, but it actually has four seats.
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_00: And I think of that one as kind of like a uh flying Corolla.
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_00: So a little bit more, a little bit more comfortable, a little bit more stable.
• 3:17
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, but the best one I think is the is the DA42.
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_00: And I think we're gonna talk a little bit about actually the first time we ever flow that one.
• 3:24
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and that one is a twin and much, much, much more stable, much more, much more comfortable.
• 3:29
  SPEAKER_02: So interestingly, the inside of the DA40 and the 42 are about the same size, four seats, but twin engine and so forth.
• 3:36
  SPEAKER_02: What's really cool about the Diamond Series aircraft are they have the Garmin glass cockpit.
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_02: So they have two big monitors in the cockpit, which are are frankly bigger than many of the screens I flew with in the Air Force.
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_02: Technology continues to advance, and uh.
• 3:54
  SPEAKER_02: So, Stephanie, tell us about the worst weather you've flown through with me.
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_00: Well, it's interesting because most of the time it's spectacular.
• 4:01
  SPEAKER_00: I get to fly in the Pacific Northwest, and it's typically beautiful in the summertime.
• 4:05
  SPEAKER_00: And I think it was not in the summertime, it was part of the problem.
• 4:09
  SPEAKER_00: We had flown up to to Vancouver to see you two.
• 4:12
  SPEAKER_00: And it was a lovely ride up there.
• 4:14
  SPEAKER_00: We had uh a good friend flying up there with us, went to the concert, and then the next morning, as much as flying in little private aircraft can sound so glamorous, uh, I remember vividly that day that you had to set up the airplane, do all the pre-flight, and I ran out from that that little airport, got soaked, got into the airplane, you closed the canopy, we're both soaking wet, and that was the good part.
• 4:38
  SPEAKER_00: Because then we get up, we basically get up into the air, and it felt to me like we were just in a giant cotton ball.
• 4:45
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 4:45
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, there was nothing.
• 4:46
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, it was just sort of white clouds and everything, could not could not see a thing.
• 4:51
  SPEAKER_00: So, one, there were clouds all around and we couldn't see it.
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_00: Two, we were soaking wet.
• 4:56
  SPEAKER_00: Three, it was like rain hammering everything, and four, the wind just jostling us around.
• 5:02
  SPEAKER_00: I remember thinking, this is not fun.
• 5:05
  SPEAKER_02: Welcome to instrument flying.
• 5:07
  SPEAKER_02: Indeed.
• 5:08
  SPEAKER_02: We we came back total IMC.
• 5:10
  SPEAKER_02: Instrument meteorological conditions.
• 5:12
  SPEAKER_02: And we had to navigate entirely by the instruments in the cockpit to get back from Vancouver back to Seattle.
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_02: Our flight up with Cindy on the way to Vancouver was spectacular.
• 5:23
  SPEAKER_02: It was the flight back where we had to fly through the weather and it's a reminder, you know, that even in a what seems like a benign environment, you gotta be ready for bad weather and know how to deal with it.
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and even better, what was waiting for us?
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_00: More rain on the tarmac.
• 5:36
  SPEAKER_02: Oh well, yeah, getting soaked once wasn't enough.
• 5:40
  SPEAKER_02: Wasn't enough.
• 5:40
  SPEAKER_02: That's right.
• 5:41
  SPEAKER_02: So most of the time, Stephanie, when we go out flying, everything has gone great.
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_02: But once in a while, things can go wrong.
• 5:49
  SPEAKER_02: Are there any in-flight emergencies that we've experienced that that you recall?
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_00: So yes.
• 5:55
  SPEAKER_00: I do.
• 5:56
  SPEAKER_00: I do remember, uh I do remember when we were coming back from Friday Harbor.
• 6:00
  SPEAKER_00: It had been a beautiful, just a beautiful summer afternoon.
• 6:03
  SPEAKER_00: We had flown up to the San Juan's.
• 6:05
  SPEAKER_00: That's always such a that's a gorgeous ride.
• 6:07
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, they fly around sort of the mountains in the water.
• 6:10
  SPEAKER_00: And and so we were on our way back at six o'clock in the evening or something like that.
• 6:15
  SPEAKER_00: Just a beautiful day.
• 6:16
  SPEAKER_00: And uh it just started feeling like a little bit weird.
• 6:19
  SPEAKER_02: We were over at the Olympic Mountains, so we're at about 8,000 feet, and the mountains are about 7,000 feet underneath us.
• 6:26
  SPEAKER_00: And it starts feeling, you know, it starts feeling like a little bit bumpy, and then I started hearing kind of a funny noise.
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_00: And then uh I saw you start like messing around with pushing a bunch of buttons, and I I've learned that pushing a bunch of buttons generally is not a good song.
• 6:40
  SPEAKER_00: Uh then you I remember you were looking at the at the checklist on your that was factory.
• 6:45
  SPEAKER_01: On my knee board, yeah.
• 6:46
  SPEAKER_00: And then you reached behind you just like this and you he handed me a binder and you said, Sweetie, would you look up in flight emergency?
• 6:54
  SPEAKER_00: And I said, Sure.
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_00: D, E.
• 7:00
  SPEAKER_00: And then you said, You really want to look at the yellow pages.
• 7:03
  SPEAKER_01: Uh-huh.
• 7:03
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, the yellow pages.
• 7:05
  SPEAKER_00: The ones that say emergencies.
• 7:07
  SPEAKER_00: And so I handed it to you and you flipped through the emergencies.
• 7:11
  SPEAKER_02: Actually, no, I think you read the read the steps to me.
• 7:13
  SPEAKER_00: That's right.
• 7:14
  SPEAKER_00: So, yeah.
• 7:14
  SPEAKER_00: So I read the steps from the yellow pages on emergence on in flight emergency.
• 7:19
  SPEAKER_02: And what page did I ask you to look at?
• 7:21
  SPEAKER_00: Uh I think it was at emergency landing.
• 7:23
  SPEAKER_02: Engine failure.
• 7:24
  SPEAKER_00: Engine failure.
• 7:25
  SPEAKER_00: That's right.
• 7:26
  SPEAKER_02: That's right.
• 7:26
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, good, engine failure.
• 7:28
  SPEAKER_02: This is when it's good to be flying a twin as opposed to a single engine.
• 7:31
  SPEAKER_00: We were in a twin over the mountains.
• 7:32
  SPEAKER_00: That's right.
• 7:33
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 7:33
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, yeah.
• 7:34
  SPEAKER_00: Can you look up, honey?
• 7:35
  SPEAKER_00: Engine failure.
• 7:37
  SPEAKER_00: So I read the steps on engine failure, and then you I think you pushed more buttons and you went to a different frequency, and then you started talking, I think, to the people, was it at Boeingfield or at CTAC?
• 7:48
  SPEAKER_02: At that point it would have been uh Seattle Center.
• 7:50
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, Seattle Center.
• 7:51
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 7:51
  SPEAKER_00: And so then you said we're gonna did you say we were gonna come in for an emergency landing?
• 7:56
  SPEAKER_02: Yes.
• 7:57
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 7:57
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that was good.
• 7:58
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, that's you know that was good.
• 8:00
  SPEAKER_02: When you lose an engine, that's generally what you mean.
• 8:02
  SPEAKER_00: So they said that we are we're coming in for an emergency landing.
• 8:05
  SPEAKER_00: And uh I think the technical term for what I was feeling was sphincter failure.
• 8:10
  SPEAKER_00: And uh and so we're coming in, we're coming around.
• 8:13
  SPEAKER_02: And and actually it's important to note that we were landing at Boeing Field, which is right next to Sea Tac Airport, and that the two runways sort of point at each other, and Boeing Field is down in a little uh valley underneath the departure corridor out of Sea Tac.
• 8:28
  SPEAKER_02: So as you are coming in to Boeing Field, you want to stay low normally to stay underneath the traffic, the airliners at Sea Tac.
• 8:35
  SPEAKER_00: And so we're coming in up high, and then we find out that they have they've what's the term?
• 8:40
  SPEAKER_00: They have held traffic at Sea Tank.
• 8:42
  SPEAKER_00: So just for a minute, they didn't close the airport.
• 8:44
  SPEAKER_00: You told me they didn't close the airport, they just didn't let anybody take off or land until we came in to Boeing Field.
• 8:49
  SPEAKER_02: Well, we have to explain why though.
• 8:51
  SPEAKER_02: So as we're coming in to Boeing Field, we've only got one engine, so we want to stay high.
• 8:56
  SPEAKER_02: We don't want to come in low, low, low, because if we lose the other engine, we won't have any options.
• 9:00
  SPEAKER_02: So we want to stay high so that we if we need to glide, we can.
• 9:04
  SPEAKER_02: And so now we are coming in high into Boeing Field.
• 9:08
  SPEAKER_02: And so what does that do to the traffic at Seattle?
• 9:10
  SPEAKER_00: Well, apparently it stops it.
• 9:12
  SPEAKER_02: Yes.
• 9:12
  SPEAKER_00: So, yeah, so here we are in our in our little plane, I believe, coming in high into Boeing Field.
• 9:17
  SPEAKER_00: And we come in and we land at Boeing Field, and and much to my surprise, we are chased down the runway by fire trucks and ambulance.
• 9:25
  SPEAKER_02: They were following us.
• 9:26
  SPEAKER_02: They were following us.
• 9:27
  SPEAKER_02: They were following us.
• 9:28
  SPEAKER_02: And then what happened?
• 9:29
  SPEAKER_00: Well, then we we pull up and we stop, and I think it was was it a fireman?
• 9:33
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know, comes up and like uh opened the canopy, goes, You all alright in there?
• 9:38
  SPEAKER_00: You said yes, and I said, I gotta go to the bathroom.
• 9:44
  SPEAKER_02: Just just another day of private.
• 9:47
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, just another day of private aviation.
• 9:49
  SPEAKER_02: Yes, indeed.
• 9:50
  SPEAKER_02: Well, it could be any aviation.
• 9:51
  SPEAKER_02: So Stephanie, I mentioned at the start of the podcast that uh you got a call sign.
• 9:55
  SPEAKER_02: Six guns.
• 9:56
  SPEAKER_02: Now, I I did not give you that call sign, but I was wondering if you would be so kind as to share how you got that call sign and who gave it to you.
• 10:04
  SPEAKER_00: Well, so there's sort of a a couple of factors into that story.
• 10:07
  SPEAKER_00: One, my first husband for our first anniversary, I mean, I I I believe that the etiquette books tell you this, that your first anniversary gift is a handgun.
• 10:17
  SPEAKER_00: And so mine was a Texas option.
• 10:19
  SPEAKER_00: It was a Lady Smith and Wesson um six-shooter revolver.
• 10:23
  SPEAKER_00: And that became sort of a uh once I was divorced, uh that became sort of a a running joke.
• 10:28
  SPEAKER_00: And then I worked for this guy, wonderful friend of mine in a in a number of different jobs, guy named Jason Roloff.
• 10:34
  SPEAKER_00: And he's the one who said that sometimes, uh, one, he knew the story about the about the Lady Smith and Wesson.
• 10:39
  SPEAKER_00: And two, he also had worked with me enough to know that sometimes I could come in a little hot into meetings.
• 10:45
  SPEAKER_02: Well, but there was also this episode where didn't you take your team as a team building exercise in the Pacific Northwest out to a shooting gallery, a shooting range.
• 10:54
  SPEAKER_00: A shooting range.
• 10:55
  SPEAKER_02: And let's just say that many of these people had probably not been near a firearm before.
• 11:00
  SPEAKER_00: We did that as a team building, as a team building exercise.
• 11:03
  SPEAKER_02: With like target practice and and like the We did.
• 11:06
  SPEAKER_00: We had tar so we had target practice, and people got to pick out their pick out their guns of choice.
• 11:11
  SPEAKER_00: And this was in the Pacific Northwest.
• 11:13
  SPEAKER_00: And so one, people absolutely loved it, and then came to understand how it is that people could enjoy target practice or shooting.
• 11:21
  SPEAKER_00: Second, is that we all brought in to the second day of our leadership retreat, everybody had their targets uh up on the walls.
• 11:29
  SPEAKER_00: And I believe that mine, after years of practice, was the best.
• 11:33
  SPEAKER_00: And then he always said then when I come in a little hot into a meeting, he would say, Here come Six Guns.
• 11:38
  SPEAKER_02: And that's significant because in the novel that's coming out this fall, we have a character named Six Guns.
• 11:45
  SPEAKER_02: So we'll we'll come back to that in a moment.
• 11:46
  SPEAKER_02: Uh before we do, though, something I always love to ask people on the podcast what's their most memorable experience in an airplane?
• 11:53
  SPEAKER_02: So of all the times we've been flying together, I'd like to ask you, what was the most memorable sortie?
• 11:59
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, well, hands down, was a 2017 eclipse.
• 12:03
  SPEAKER_00: And I think they like called it the All-America Eclipse.
• 12:06
  SPEAKER_00: And we knew that there was we had read that there was going to be totality over Oregon.
• 12:10
  SPEAKER_00: And we wanted to be sure that we were gonna see it.
• 12:13
  SPEAKER_00: And so I think that might have been the first time that we ever flew the twin.
• 12:17
  SPEAKER_02: Although we weren't planning to buy the twin, we were gonna do one of the DA 40s.
• 12:20
  SPEAKER_02: We had it rented, we're all set to go, just the two of us, and then at the last minute, the owner of the plane says, you know what, I'm gonna take because I want to go see the eclipse.
• 12:29
  SPEAKER_02: There we were, stuck without an airplane.
• 12:31
  SPEAKER_02: And what happened?
• 12:32
  SPEAKER_00: So we ended up with a twin.
• 12:33
  SPEAKER_00: That's right.
• 12:34
  SPEAKER_00: We went up with a flight instructor or another pilot, and so we're all ready, we've done all the planning for to be able to see the eclipse.
• 12:40
  SPEAKER_00: We got our special eclipse so you don't burn your eyeballs off glasses, got the little thing, you know, that you swim through the pinhole so that you might be able to see it.
• 12:48
  SPEAKER_00: And the whole time wondering, um, now we knew we were gonna be able to, the whole point was to be able to be above the clouds, but would we be able to see totality?
• 12:56
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 12:56
  SPEAKER_00: And so there, I'm like a vigilant.
• 12:58
  SPEAKER_00: And so there I am.
• 12:59
  SPEAKER_00: You guys are in the front, I'm in the back, and we're like, okay, we're gonna be able to see it.
• 13:02
  SPEAKER_00: And then so you got the prep and the plane making sure we're gonna be able to see it, and then you've got the all the the uh the chatter on the radio.
• 13:10
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 13:10
  SPEAKER_00: And they're like, you know, how many?
• 13:13
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, just a gazillion.
• 13:14
  SPEAKER_02: Hundreds, hundreds of planes, all converging on the line of totality in the Pacific Northwest, because every pilot up there has the same idea that we do.
• 13:23
  SPEAKER_02: They want to see, be sure they see the eclipse, be sure they get above the clouds, and they can go right to the line of totality and be sure of seeing this phenomenon that uh I mean you and I had never seen one before.
• 13:35
  SPEAKER_00: So a couple of them was especially funny.
• 13:37
  SPEAKER_00: So, well, one, there's skydivers up there.
• 13:39
  SPEAKER_00: So we're listening to the chatter about them, and they want to jump out of an airplane during totality, which means they want to be up when there are hundreds of amateur pilots up and they want to jump out of the airplane in the dark.
• 13:51
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 13:51
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not quite sure you want to why you want to do that.
• 13:53
  SPEAKER_00: So we're hearing all of that chatter.
• 13:54
  SPEAKER_00: And then the other one was the guy, and he's like, it's what you I won't get it right.
• 13:59
  SPEAKER_00: He's like, he asks the air traffic control guy, Did you call traffic?
• 14:03
  SPEAKER_02: Can you yeah, can you provide separation from the traffic for me, please?
• 14:07
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and to which the guy says, No.
• 14:11
  SPEAKER_02: So there are literally hundreds of airplanes right in front of you.
• 14:15
  SPEAKER_02: See in a void.
• 14:16
  SPEAKER_00: See and yes, see and avoid.
• 14:18
  SPEAKER_02: See in a void.
• 14:19
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, so yeah, you have all this fun traffic going on, and we're waiting to see if we're gonna be able to see it.
• 14:24
  SPEAKER_00: And then all of a sudden, it's dark.
• 14:28
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, like midnight dark.
• 14:30
  SPEAKER_00: And the and totality, you know, it goes click.
• 14:34
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, literally, you you see a see a see it, see it, and then click, and it's dark, and you see the sun, and it's just this tiny um, it's like a just a little black ring and the corona all around it, and everything is like completely still.
• 14:49
  SPEAKER_00: No one is saying anything on the radio.
• 14:53
  SPEAKER_00: It it's the middle of the day and it's the middle of the night, and and and I it I still, even though it's been all these years ago, I still just can't believe how spectacular and magnificent it was.
• 15:05
  SPEAKER_00: And what we're probably I don't know, a minute, minute 15, something like that.
• 15:09
  SPEAKER_00: And then it moves off, and the sun kind of comes back up again, and off the, you know, off the end of the airplane, and I'm trying to take pictures of it as fast as I can, and none of it does justice.
• 15:21
  SPEAKER_00: And then a guy comes on the the radio and says, Well, that was just about the coolest thing I've ever seen.
• 15:29
  SPEAKER_00: And this is and and he had the you have to do it, because he he had like the pilot voice.
• 15:33
  SPEAKER_00: He didn't have like the goofy amateur voice, he didn't have the you know, the girl voice.
• 15:38
  SPEAKER_00: Do the pilot voice.
• 15:40
  SPEAKER_02: I gotta say that was about the coolest thing I've ever seen.
• 15:42
  SPEAKER_00: That was it.
• 15:43
  SPEAKER_02: And it wasn't me, it was another pilot on the city.
• 15:47
  SPEAKER_00: It was all right.
• 15:48
  SPEAKER_02: Well, so I mentioned the novel.
• 15:50
  SPEAKER_02: I think most of our listeners know the novel I have been working on for the last six years uh will be published on Veterans Day this year, November 11th, 2026, just a few weeks from now.
• 16:00
  SPEAKER_02: What many people may not know is that the main character in the book is a female fighter pilot with the call sign Six Guns.
• 16:09
  SPEAKER_02: Because, as it just so happens, I have modeled the main character, her blonde cow lick, green eyes, personality, and very sharp tongue after Stephanie Six Guns, Sanford.
• 16:22
  SPEAKER_00: Well, yeah.
• 16:23
  SPEAKER_00: Well, but you modeled it the good stuff after like serious girl pot.
• 16:27
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, absolutely.
• 16:28
  SPEAKER_02: And and in fact, uh after many of the great chick fighter pilots.
• 16:32
  SPEAKER_02: And in fact, we have a group referred to in the book as the Wings and Pearls.
• 16:37
  SPEAKER_02: And the reason for how that came about is because I know exactly what guy fighter pilots talk like, but I wasn't sure how women fighter pilots talked, especially amongst themselves when the guys weren't around.
• 16:52
  SPEAKER_02: And I was curious to know.
• 16:53
  SPEAKER_02: And so Stephanie and I asked our good friend Bobby Dornboss to invite several members of the CFPA over for dinner.
• 17:02
  SPEAKER_02: And so I think we had seven or eight chick fighter pilots around the dinner table, and we asked them three questions.
• 17:09
  SPEAKER_02: You want to talk about that?
• 17:10
  SPEAKER_00: So you'll have to do the questions, but I can say we've had a lot of dinner parties around that table, and we met a lot of really interesting people in the lives that we've been blessed to lead.
• 17:20
  SPEAKER_00: The coolest dinner party I have ever been to, the most interesting conversation that I've ever been a part of.
• 17:25
  SPEAKER_00: And by the way, I think you and I said maybe 25 words each, but you gave these great prompts and just listening to them tell the stories of what it was like and some of the questions that you asked folks on this on this podcast, but their intensity, this the specificity, their sense of humor with each other, it really was absolutely a highlight.
• 17:45
  SPEAKER_00: So Eve may have my my cowlic and Eve may have my call sign, but Eve's a chick fighter pilot, and and they emanate um into that, into that character.
• 17:54
  SPEAKER_00: They really were.
• 17:55
  SPEAKER_00: They were they were the most badass women, may maybe badass people that I have ever met.
• 18:00
  SPEAKER_02: I asked only three questions, and I was curious to know, uh, wanting to make sure I got the voices of the women fighter pilots right in the book.
• 18:08
  SPEAKER_02: I wanted to see how they talked to one another.
• 18:10
  SPEAKER_02: And so I asked three questions.
• 18:12
  SPEAKER_02: One, tell me about your worst in-flight emergency.
• 18:15
  SPEAKER_02: Second, tell me about what it was like to fly in combat.
• 18:18
  SPEAKER_02: And three, I asked them, what's it like to be the only woman in a fighter squadron?
• 18:23
  SPEAKER_02: Because in most cases they had always been the only woman in their squadron.
• 18:29
  SPEAKER_02: And so what I found is that their answers about in-flight emergencies were exactly the same as the guys.
• 18:36
  SPEAKER_02: No difference.
• 18:37
  SPEAKER_02: But to the question of combat, there were some differences, but largely the same.
• 18:42
  SPEAKER_02: Where they were so interesting and so different were their descriptions of what it was like to be the only woman in a fighter squadron, and they opened my eyes in terms of what they had experienced, what they went through that I had never had to go through, as they described some of the hazing from their brothers in arms, which I did not expect.
• 19:02
  SPEAKER_02: And so I felt blessed to be able to capture their voices and add them to the novel Have Blue Sky.
• 19:09
  SPEAKER_02: Uh because there's a whole lot of guy fighter pilots in the book talking about their experiences.
• 19:14
  SPEAKER_02: But I also wanted to be sure that for this element, for this group, that I represented them as accurately as I possibly could.
• 19:21
  SPEAKER_02: And so I'm blessed to have had their insights that we could add.
• 19:25
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 19:26
  SPEAKER_00: They're amazing.
• 19:26
  SPEAKER_02: So Stephanie, I have one more question for you.
• 19:29
  SPEAKER_02: You've had a chance to read drafts of the novel over the last six years.
• 19:33
  SPEAKER_02: But what's it like seeing a character in the novel come to life who shares so many experiences with you?
• 19:43
  SPEAKER_00: Um that's a fascinating question because we're both writers.
• 19:47
  SPEAKER_00: And so it's been really fun and interesting to actually see them come to life, to see people that we knew, to see people and experiences that you created, to see moments that happened but then, you know, were memorialized in some ways.
• 20:06
  SPEAKER_00: So it has been um it's been fun to have a backseat.
• 20:11
  SPEAKER_00: To watching you write this, to see our own experiences, to see those fantastic conversations manifested there that we had around the table, watching the enthusiasm that you have for the topic, the respect you have for these women, and the joy you take in telling flying stories.
• 20:29
  SPEAKER_00: And it's been especially fun to watch you then take it into this uh format, which was a little bit of an of an accident.
• 20:35
  SPEAKER_02: It was something that I wanted to do but didn't realize.
• 20:38
  SPEAKER_02: Sorry about the podcast itself, didn't realize how much fun, how interesting these would be capturing the experience of our fellow aviators.
• 20:47
  SPEAKER_02: So I feel blessed to have been able to do that.
• 20:49
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I can't wait for the next one.
• 20:51
  SPEAKER_02: So, Stephanie?
• 20:52
  SPEAKER_02: So six guns.
• 20:53
  SPEAKER_00: Six.
• 20:54
  SPEAKER_02: Thank you so much for being on the podcast today.
• 20:56
  SPEAKER_00: Fun way to spend a Labor Day weekend.
• 20:58
  SPEAKER_02: You've been listening to the Flyboy Podcast.
• 21:00
  SPEAKER_02: This podcast is brought to you by our parent organization, the Flyboy Lab.
• 21:04
  SPEAKER_02: The mission of the Flyboy Lab is to elevate awareness and appreciation of aviators, their service, sacrifices, and contributions, and hopefully we've met that mission today.
• 21:12
  SPEAKER_02: New episodes of the podcast drop every Thursday morning, and you can find previous episodes on our website, theflyboypodcast.com.
• 21:20
  SPEAKER_02: Until our next sortie, push the mock, use the vertical, and fly safe.