[Rhodes22-list] Air Races - Mary Dilda

Wed Jun 1 05:51:39 EDT 2005

Here is an article from today's Memphis Commercial
Apppeal. You've heard me talk about Mary before. I've
attached the photos from the article to spare you
registering with the paper to view them, but they may
be small (there is no news value in actually reading
the Appeal and unless you need to line a bird cage, no
reason to buy a hard copy).

http://www.commercialappeal.com/mca/local_news/article/0,1426,MCA_437_3820744,00.html

Photos by Thomas Busler/The Commercial Appeal

Mary Dilda, a FedEx pilot, aerobat and competitive
airplane racer, will compete in the Tunica Air Races
this week.

Heart for flying
Dashing around pylons, pilot lives for aerial thrill

By Oliver Staley
Contact
May 31, 2005

Mary Dilda slices through the early evening air at
sickening speed. 

The speedometer creeps up -- 200, 210, 220 mph -- as
the plane screams down, hurtling toward the Olive
Branch runway. 

As the passenger behind her turns first white, then
green, Dilda banks her T6 so steeply that its left
wing is sticking straight up and the tip of the right
wing is just 10 feet off the ground. 

Her husband, standing on the ground, flickers past and
Dilda pulls back hard on the stick, lifting the plane
skyward, ready to do it again. 

After about 20 minutes Dilda is back on the ground,
laughing. Her passenger is soaked with sweat and
quivering, but she looks as fresh as when she climbed
in the cockpit. 

In truth, the flight wasn't much of a workout for
Dilda, a FedEx pilot, aerobat and competitive airplane
racer. With the Tunica Air Races just weeks away,
Dilda was tuning up her T6 Two of Hearts, a
single-engine World War II propeller plane she owns
with her husband, Steve, in preparation for three days
of racing. 

A race, she said, is a mental and physical battle,
with as many as six planes banking in unison around a
five-mile course of pylons. 

"You've got planes on either side of you," she said.
"It's incredible." 

During racing the planes are sealed to be as
aerodynamic as possible, and the temperature in the
cockpits climbs well past 100 degrees. The noise can
be deafening and pilots fight centrifugal forces that
can approach 10 Gs. And unlike in auto racing, where
the drag of a car in front can help, the slipstream of
another plane is no place to be. 

"If you get into any wake turbulence it has a tendency
to knock you around," potentially into the pylons or
other planes, Dilda said. "They have had planes
connect and they never make it." 

Death is a reality in air racing. Fourteen pilots have
been killed since 1964 at the Reno Air Races -- until
this year the sport's only regular venue -- and given
how few people compete in the extraordinarily
expensive pastime, few other sports have as high a
fatality rate. 

It's the sport's danger, though, that creates the
thrills. It's why NASCAR is more exciting than track
meets and why people go to the rodeo. 

Dilda is up front about the risk but doesn't dwell on
it. 

"It is dangerous but these things can happen at any
point in time," she said. Besides, she said, the
pilots she races "are the cream of the crop." 

At 46, Dilda is blonde, trim and disarmingly friendly.
But her ready smile belies the cut- throat instincts
of a competitor. 

In her eight years of racing at Reno she has finished
in the top five of the T6 class in all but her first
year, with two second-place finishes. In 2002, flying
a borrowed Czech fighter at more than 400 mph, she won
the jet class, beating a field that included a pair of
astronauts. 

Dilda has been flying since she was a teenager in
rural New Mexico, tagging along with her rancher
father in his Cessna. At Oklahoma State University,
Dilda gave flying lessons and soon after joined the
Air Force. 

She served for 10 years, including during the first
Gulf War when she flew massive C141 cargo planes. 

She has been with FedEx since 1994 as a simulator
instructor and more recently a cargo pilot. Racing and
stunt flying followed, after she and Steve bought Two
of Hearts in 1996. Steve has raced in the past but
he'll serve as the "air boss" at the Tunica races,
directing the planes from the ground. 

Her dedication to flying has resulted in some
sacrifices, notably not having children. 

"When I was young I decided I was going to be a mother
or a pilot but I couldn't do both," she said. "I give
credit to all the women who do it, but gosh ..." 

No children, of course, means more time to spend aloft
and tinkering with Two of Hearts. 

The plane set a T6 record of 239 mph in 2003, and in
the weeks leading up to race it has been further tuned
and modified. Dilda's flight over Olive Branch was to
work out a new propeller. 

"We've done just about everything we can do to make it
faster," she said back in the hangar. 

Now, after a rash of strong showings in Reno, Dilda's
aspirations for the inaugural race in her backyard are
obvious. 

"Knock on wood, I plan on winning," she said, smiling
sweetly. 

-- Oliver Staley: 529-6515

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