Airborne mix of aggression, grace and discipline

<p>Patty Wagstaff will open the annual Wings Over Wine Country air show Aug. 20 and 21 with a touch-and-go landing of sorts.</p><p>One of the country's most celebrated pilots, Wagstaff will display the aggression and grace that made her the first female U.S. Aerobatics champion.</p><p>But don't expect her to linger after signing autographs. No sooner will Wagstaff land than she'll start the short commute to her summer job, taxiing down the runway to Cal Fire's Sonoma Air Attack Base where she'll start her work day as a fire pilot.</p><p>Air show organizers would love to have her fly later in the show, but they'd much rather have Wagstaff as an opening act than not have her at all.</p><p>“She is hands-down the best female aerobatic performer in the country today,” said Dave Pinsky, executive director of the Pacific Coast Air Museum. “Patty Wagstaff is the real deal. And she is a big deal.”</p><p>A list of all her plaudits, including induction into the International Aerospace Hall of Fame, would run off the page. Video gamers can even take her plane up on Microsoft Flight Simulator.</p><p>At Cal Fire, though, Wagstaff is just the new girl on the block, working her second fire season alongside pilots who've been tackling blazes for decades.</p><p>Even her vaunted resume was no guarantee of getting hired, said Jeff Cavarra, program manager for DynCorp International, which contracts with Cal Fire to provide pilots. </p><p>In a typical year, the company gets 400 to 600 applications to become fire pilots and hires no more than two, he said. If anything, Wagstaff's daredevil exploits raised questions about whether she had the discipline required in aerial firefighting, he said.</p><p>Indeed Cal Fire might seem a curious choice for a woman whose taste for risk is enshrined at the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum in Washington, where her championship plane hangs as she often flew it, upside down.</p><p>In firefighting, there's no need for such inversions. Her job is to provide a steady platform for air boss Capt. Chris Jurasek, allowing him to organize the chaos below using six radio frequencies.</p><p>For Wagstaff, that can mean hours circling overhead, keeping the plane in constant orbit around the fire. It's vital work, but it's hardly barnstorming.</p><p>Still, Wagstaff said the intensity, preparation and discipline required are similar to the focus and control needed in aerobatics, where carelessness can kill — an explanation that Cavarra said eased his concerns. </p><p>Her current job is a step toward her ultimate goal with Cal Fire, one that obviously shares the derring-do of aerobatics: flying a tanker.</p><p>With more than 1,200 gallons of retardant in their plane's belly, tanker pilots specialize in flying low, slow and heavy into the smoke where they drop precision loads.</p><p>Too low and the 10,000-pound dump can rip into the ground like wet cement. Too high and the retardant can dissipate uselessly in the wind. Even Wagstaff tips her hat to the level of difficulty.</p><p>“I've flown along with these guys enough to know what they do is pretty edgy,” Wagstaff said. “It takes a lot of skill. It's like one of the holy grails of aviation.”</p><p>It's just the sort of challenge Wagstaff enjoys even as she gets to the age when many put their adventurous days behind them. Wagstaff politely puts her age as in her 50s.</p><p>In the past decade, she's gone to Kenya almost yearly to train pilots of the Kenya Wildlife Service who protect elephants, rhinos and other animals at risk of poachers.</p><p>In Sonoma County, where she's living for the summer with her two Jack Russells and her parrot Buddha, she often begins the days with yoga in Healdsburg. She spends her one day off a week riding at the Santa Rosa Equestrian Center. She also rides bicycles and motorcycles.</p><p>Slowing down isn't in the cards. For one, she still has to work. Air shows don't make you rich, and as she puts it, she has a horse at her home in Florida and he needs shoes.</p><p>More importantly, she doesn't see the advantage in retirement. The most vital and dynamic people she admires, people like her friend Gen. Chuck Yeager, don't slow down, she said. </p><p>Her father, a commercial airline pilot who ignited her love of flying by giving her a moment's control of a DC-10 when she was 10, flew till he was 76, she said. She's planning on a similar run in the air.</p><p>“This is a great job,” she said. “It's the kind of job nobody wants to retire from.”</p>