Posted on 08/07/2011 5:01:32 AM PDT by stevie_d_64
CHICAGO (AP) — Myrtle Rose was taking a short flight over suburban Chicago when the 75-year-old aviation enthusiast looked out her cockpit window to see two F-16 fighter jets. She assumed the military pilots were just slowing down to get a closer look at her antique plane.
It wasn't until she landed her 1941 Piper J-3 Cub that friends and the police told her the attention was much more serious — for straying into restricted airspace during a visit by President Barack Obama.
Rose, who tries to fly every day when weather permits, said she had been itching to get back in the air Wednesday after a number of days on the ground. She normally uses her computer to check for airspace restrictions, but it wasn't working properly.
"I hadn't flown in over a week," she said. "It was a beautiful afternoon." After some guests departed her home, she "just climbed in the airplane and left."
To make matters worse, she said, "I didn't have my radio on. I was just flying around."
On any other day, the brief flight would never have attracted notice. But Obama was in Chicago for a fundraiser marking his 50th birthday.
"There's really no excuse for not knowing," said Lt. Col. Mike Humphreys, a spokesman for the North American Aerospace Defense Command, which scrambled the two warplanes, a proposition that costs $9,000 an hour for each jet. "Anyone who flies an aircraft should know the restrictions."
Rose said she was about 30 miles from O'Hare Airport when her plane was intercepted. As the fighters appeared, she wasn't alarmed.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
Tune in next week...
I want to be like this lady when I’m 75!
Bump. To bad, I thinks she is pretty cool and still a babe at 75! Bet she was a 10 at 35.
Patience is a virtue.
“There’s really no excuse for not knowing”
Light Col. Mike Humphreys is an arrogant insufferable jerk who probably hopes his fascistic attitude will fast track him to full bull colonel before Obama is kicked out in 2012.
I flew through, not over, downtown Chicago once in a UH-1H. We checked NOTAMs and maintained radar contact (the only possible criticism of this pilot; radio and transponder are basic for flight safety) and there was no problem as we noodled past the Sears Tower with people waving down at us from the observation deck.
“$9,000.00 per flying hour”. That’s a BS charge; those hours are going to be flown anyway just doing training task iterations and the F-16s being diverted for a real interception is merely an added training benefit.
And I still don’t see where this flyboy gets to pass judgement on the actions of a private citizen.
Rose is a fine company...during and after my years in the cold storage business, I got to know many of their people quite well........class act, and super baby backs too.
Her plane’s name is “Winston”.
Hussein’s SS probably has standing orders against anything within 100 miles of him having anything to do with that name.
I feel exactly the same way you do.
The Imperial trappings of this POSOTUS piss me off more and more with each passing day.
Private flying is a rich person’s pastime, anyway. We need to tax it to death, bury it under regulation and otherwise try in every way to suffocate it or kill it. It is the only “fair” approach to such a thing.
(Do I need to add the /S there?)
For a while by standing up at about a 45 degree angle and adding a LOT of power. It's a stunt that is displayed during most Thunderbird/Blue Angel air shows.
“fighter jets” ? LOL. Is that different than a “fighter prop”. Wow.
As stated earlier, an F-16’s stall (minimum) speed is above 90. Poor journalism. The fighters would have had to circle the plane.
AVIATION PING
That makes more sense than anything else.
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