Aviation Thrills, Chills, and Skills with Vicky Benzing
This episode is sponsored by Culligan Water
In today’s thrilling episode of The Adrenaline Zone, Sandy and Sandra embark on an engaging conversation with the remarkable Vicky Benzing, a multifaceted pilot, air racer, and aerobatic performer. This episode uncovers a myriad of fascinating themes that provide insights into Vicky's extraordinary journey and the captivating world of aviation and aerobatics.
Vicky's lifelong passion for aviation was ignited during her childhood, courtesy of her uncle—an experienced pilot and air racer. However, it was a pivotal college skydiving experience that set her on a course to pursue a career in the skies. Her early introduction to aviation paints a vivid picture of how exposure to flight at a young age can kindle a lifelong calling.
Vicky's path into the world of aerobatics commenced with her early flight training, which provided her the opportunity to explore thrilling aerobatic maneuvers like loops and rolls. Her background as a skydiver proved invaluable, helping her become comfortable with unconventional orientations in three-dimensional space. After obtaining her private pilot's license, Vicky ventured into formal aerobatic training, refining her skills and eventually transitioning to airshows, leaving her corporate career behind to chase her passion.
At the heart of the podcast lies a compelling theme—the art of managing risk in the realm of aviation and aerobatics. Vicky's remarkable ability to navigate these risks takes center stage throughout the episode. She candidly shares her experiences in training, competitive racing, and aerobatic performances, shedding light on the rigorous safety measures and precautions that underpin her exhilarating profession.
Vicky's soaring ambitions find unwavering support from her partnership with California Aeronautical University. This collaboration offers an accelerated aviation program, enabling aspiring pilots to earn their degrees in just three years, complete with flight training and the promise of job opportunities with partnering airlines. It's a testament to the bright future awaiting budding aviators.
An intriguing facet of Vicky's journey is her pursuit of academic excellence alongside her passion for flying. Holding a Ph.D. in chemistry, she intricately weaves her academic pursuits into her aviation narrative. Her love for chemistry and her insatiable thirst for knowledge serve as a testament to the multifaceted nature of her character.
The podcast delves into Vicky's experiences as a female pilot in an industry historically dominated by men. While she acknowledges that significant barriers weren't a part of her journey, her story stands as an inspiring example for young girls aspiring to emulate her path. Vicky's accomplishments represent the breaking of stereotypes and the embrace of diversity in aviation.
Vicky provides enthralling insights into her experiences piloting various aircraft, with particular emphasis on the Extra 300L. Listeners gain a firsthand glimpse into the sheer exhilaration and challenges of maneuvering an aircraft boasting a remarkable 400-degree-per-second roll rate and the ability to endure up to ten g's. Her vivid descriptions paint a picture of the precision and skill demanded by aerobatic performances.
To perform awe-inspiring aerobatic maneuvers close to the surface, pilots like Vicky must obtain a surface-level aerobatic waiver. The podcast offers a comprehensive look into the stringent process of securing this waiver, involving incremental altitude reductions, annual evaluations, and unwavering self-regulation within the close-knit aviation community.
The episode also shines a spotlight on the international aerobatic community—a relatively small yet tightly bonded group. While the International Aerobatic Club boasts thousands of members, the number of active contest pilots and professional airshow performers remains limited. Vicky's role as an aerobatic competency evaluator underscores the unique and passionate nature of this community.
In summary, this episode offers an enthralling glimpse into the electrifying world of aviation, aerobatics, and the incredible journey of Vicky Benzing. From her childhood fascination with flight to her impressive feats as a pilot, air racer, and aerobatic performer, Vicky's story serves as a powerful testament to the indomitable spirit of passion and determination, both in conquering the skies and overcoming life's challenges.
If you enjoyed this episode of The Adrenaline Zone, hit the subscribe button so you never miss another thrilling conversation, and be sure to leave a review to help get the word out to fellow adrenaline junkies.
Transcript
Vicky Benzing: You go to a contest and you pay all this money to go to the contest. The entry fee, pay for your hotel, you pay for your car. The judges sit there in a line to tell you how poorly you flew. You go to an airshow and-
Dr. Sandra Magnus: Nobody knows.
Vicky Benzing: That’s right. They pay you to come, they pay for your hotel, your car. The crowd tells you how much they love you.
Dr. Sandra Magnus: Most of us have been to an air show once or twice in our life and have been awed by the maneuvers performed by the amazing aerobatic pilots who put their aircraft through some incredible maneuvers.
Sandy Winnefeld: We’ve always wanted to interview and aerobatic pilot and we hit the jackpot with Vicky Benzing, who flies her Extra 300S all over the country, delighting hundreds of thousands of spectators at her shows.
Dr. Sandra Magnus: She's also an air racer, holding at least one high-speed racing record, and has a beautiful Stearman aircraft, while also putting together a P-51. And in addition. she also has over 1300 parachute jumps.
Sandy:
Sandy Winnefeld: Talk about a card-carrying member of The Adrenaline Zone. But as we've learned through countless episodes, you don't get to stay in the zone very long if you don't know how to manage risk.
Dr. Sandra Magnus: And Vicky is a virtuoso at that.
Sandy Winnefeld: Many thanks to our sponsor for this episode, Culligan Water. Culligan's drinking water systems deliver the superior filtration and refreshing hydration you need to fuel your high-performance lifestyle. Learn more at culligan.com.
Dr. Sandra Magnus: And we caught up with Vicky at home in California. Vicky, welcome to The Adrenaline Zone.
Vicky Benzing: Thanks for having me.
Sandy Winnefeld: It's really nice to have you. I really look forward to this discussion, being a pilot also, although you have quite a very interesting and broad array. And one of the first things we like to do when asking our guests is what sparked your interest in what you do with aviation and aerobatics growing up? When did you know that you wanted to pursue this as sort of your life occupation?
Vicky Benzing: I don't know exactly, but my uncle took me flying when I was a little kid, and I remember it distinctly. It must have been on a holiday because we were at my grandma's house in Watsonville and my uncle took us to the airport. I sat on my dad's lap, and I was so young that I couldn't tell the difference between whether we were flying over Toyland or real houses and cars. So that was my first exposure to aviation. My uncle was a pilot – he flew a Pitts Special, actually a very special Pitts Special. He flew in air shows and was a Reno air racer. He was bigger than life to me, but I never really thought, growing up in middle-class San Jose, that I could be a pilot or do something like that. Until one day, one of my buddies asked me to go skydiving. I was in college or actually graduate school at the time. He came down to wait, my lab was in the dungeon, he came downstairs in the basement and asked me if I wanted to go skydiving. I said yes, and we went out skydiving and I fell in love with being up in the sky. Every moment we got, we go out to the drop zone and made jumps. I just wanted to be up in the air much longer than I could be under a parachute. So I had to learn to fly. The moment I stepped into the airplane and took the controls, I knew that was something I would do for the rest of my life. Relationships may come and go, but the airplanes always stayed.
Dr. Sandra Magnus: I think getting a pilot's license, people can look that up. I don’t want to stay it's straightforward, but it's pretty well-known. But then you make the next step and go into aerobatics. How do you train for aerobatics and gain proficiency in it? By the way, you didn't frighten your flight instructor off the bat and start doing loops and stuff, did you?
Vicky Benzing: Well, it turns out he was a former military instructor, and I learned to fly in a 1941 Taylorcraft, which is a utility category airplane – allowed to do loops and all that sort of thing. At the time, when I got my pilot's license over 40 years ago, we had to do spins as part of our training. They discontinued that a while back now, but back when I did it, you had to do spins. I loved the spins. He taught me how to loop and roll the airplane. During my private pilot training, whenever I got a chance, I would take the airplane out and loop and roll it. I think I kind of got used to being in unusual attitudes in three-dimensional space because when you skydive, one of the things you learn to do is do somersaults in the air and then recover and be stable. I had been in the sky in all kinds of orientations, so being upside down didn't really faze me too much.
After I got my private pilot's–
Sandy Winnefeld: Just make sure you’re strapped in.
Vicky Benzing: You have to be strapped in the airplane. So after I got my private pilot rating, I went out and did a 10-hour aerobatic course with Amelia Reid at Reid Hillview Airport, and I bought a small airplane. I bought a small airplace long before I bought a house. I used to fly that little airplane around and do all kinds of tricks in it. One day, someone who had the same airplane pulled the wings off their airplane, and I decided it wouldn't be a good idea to do aerobatics in an airplane that wasn't specially built for aerobatics. So my aerobatics took a backseat while I pursued my career in technology. It wasn't until many years later that I took a ride with Wayne Handley, who was a big airshow pilot and trainer for airshow pilots. He tumbled the airplane, and I was like, "Oh, I have to do that." At that point, I was in my career where I could afford an aerobatic airplane. I went out and bought an extra and started training in earnest and competing in International Aerobatic Club contests. That’s kind of how you learn to do it. You get some coaching from within the airplane, and then you do contest flying, so you get critiquing from outside the airplane. You go to these contests, and you get scored on the quality of your figure – how straight your lines are, how precise your 45-degree turns are, how round your loops are, and all that stuff.
The great thing about the program in the International Aerobatic Club is that you start out at a higher level until you build your skills and start coming down in altitude. If you start out with primary or sportsman level – I started out in sportsman – you're at 1500 feet. At the intermediate level, you're at 1200 feet. In advanced, you're at 800 feet. In unlimited, you're at 325 feet. At some point, I made the transition to airshows because you go to a contest, and you pay all this money – the entry fee, hotel, and car – for the judges to critique your flying. You go to a contest and you pay all this money to go to the contest. The entry fee, pay for your hotel, you pay for your car. The judges sit there in a line to tell you how poorly you flew. You go to an airshow–
Dr. Sandra Magnus: Nobody knows.
Vicky Benzing: That’s right. They pay you to come, they pay for your hotel, your car. The crowd tells you how much they love you. I flew my first airshow when I was flying at the intermediate level in contests. That airshow was over a winery in the Philipp Valley, and they paid me in wine. I was kind of hooked on airshows, so eventually, I transitioned to just doing airshows and retired from the semiconductor industry to pursue my passion for flying.
Sandy Winnefeld: Let's roll the tape back just a little bit. I suspect when you first started flying as a young woman, you looked around on the tarmac and saw a bunch of guys, right? So, how cool was it to actually learn from another woman, Amelia Reid? She's legendary.
Vicky Benzing: She is a legend. Yeah, that was pretty cool.
Sandy Winnefeld: Was that kind of like, “Hey, I can do this,” kind of stuff?
Vicky Benzing: Yeah. Well, interestingly, when I finished my private pilot rating, I had 40 hours, which is kind of the minimum you need to finish a private pilot rating. And I went out to buy my own airplane, and I bought this airplane out in New Jersey. I live in California, so I hopped on an airline and flew out there to pick it up and fly it back across the country.
Sandy Winnefeld: For 40 hours.
Vicky Benzing: So all my training was in a Taylor Craft, and I bought a Luscombe. I went to Amelia Reid and got training from her in the Luscombe. When I left for that trip, I had 50 hours. By the time I got back, I had 100 hours. But all the guys were like, "Oh, you're going to die. You're going to kill yourself going across the country by yourself. You're a young girl." But Amelia was the one who said, "No, you can do it. Just do flight plans for each three-hour leg at a time, and you'll be fine."
Sandy Winnefeld: Stay out of the bad weather. You’ll be fine.
Vicky Benzing: Sure enough. I did, and it was a fantastic trip. I met so many great people along the way. That's the thing about the pilot community - they really look out for each other. I brought my sleeping bag and camped under the wing of my airplane, and at one airport where they’re coming in, a guy got up really early in the morning to wake me up and tell me where the weather was because back then, we didn't have the Internet or weather tools like we do now. He called flight service and figured out where all the weather was. He just pointed it out on a map and brought out to show me so I knew what route to take. And then other people let me sleep in the FBO or brought me to their home and fed me. It was incredible.
Dr. Sandra Magnus: That sounds like a wonderful trip.
Vicky Benzing: Yeah, it was great.
Sandy Winnefeld: Sounds like something Sandy would do.
Vicky Benzing: Yeah.
Sandy Winnefeld: Before we get too far into our discussion, I do want to ask you about your t-shirt because one of the sponsors for your aerial work is California Aeronautical University. Can you tell us about them and how they support you?
Vicky Benzing: The air shows, it's hard to make it all work financially with the planes and flying to the airfields. So California Aeronautical University supports me through sponsorship. They are a four-year university where the kids get their degrees in three years because they go all year round. In the first 18 months, they get all their flight ratings through CFII, which is Certified Flight Instructor for Instrument. And then in the second 18 months, while they're finishing their coursework, they are instructing younger students and getting paid for instruction. It's a great program. When they step out of the university they already have job through the airline. CAU has partnerships with a number of airlines including United Airlines. The kids have job offers before they ever matriculate. They have signing bonuses. It's an amazing time to be a pilot right now, especially for young people getting into the industry. The kids move up rather quickly from first officers to captains and then to the majors. It's pretty amazing.
Dr. Sandra Magnus: While we're on the topic of education, you mentioned that you paused to go back to school. I think you got a PhD in chemistry, correct?
Vicky Benzing: I did.
Dr. Sandra Magnus: I'm just curious why you chose chemistry instead of maybe aeronautics.
Sandy Winnefeld: Hey.
Dr. Sandra Magnus: I was just curious.
Vicky Benzing: I love chemistry. In high school, I was fortunate to go to a highschool that offered AP chemistry, and I love chemistry. So when I started as an undergraduate, I thought, "I want to be a doctor." But then I took Biology in college, and I was like, “No, I really liked the physical sciences - chemistry and physics.” So I got my BS degree in Chemistry, and then I decided that I can’t do a lot with just a BS degree. Chemistry kind of needed an advanced degree so I decided to go to grad school. I went to grad school at Berkeley and got my PhD in physical chemistry. During that time, I learned to fly. Funny story, it was really hard. I took a year of quantum mechanics, which was really hard.
Dr. Sandra Magnus: Oh, I like quantum mechanics. My first degree is in physics…until I get the science thing.
Vicky Benzing: Yeah. Well, you probably know that graduate-level quantum mechanics is pretty hard. I think second year you do your oral. I had just gone through my orals and I learned to skydive. And I think it was on my first free fall that I had a malfunction with my parachute and had to pull my reserve and landed. I just felt so powerful and full of myself for saving my own life. It made the PhD oral thing be like, “You guys are nothing.”
Dr. Sandra Magnus: I totally get that.
Vicky Benzing: So I love Math and Science. At some point, I did a postdoc up in Eugene, Oregon in the University of Oregon. And then I got hired and I thought I was going to be a professor. But I kept to a level at Oregon and I got hired by Tektronix up in Portland. I can stay up in Oregon. So I worked under Integrated Circuit Operation, wafer plant. And then I got hired by a company called Novellus Systems, which makes equipment for companies like Tektronix and Intel and all the others to make the chip. Anyway, during that timeframe, I guess I just thought, I really wanted to be an astronaut.
Dr. Sandra Magnus: It was fun. I recommend it.
Sandy Winnefeld: So you didn't want to be a Navy pilot? Come on.
Vicky Benzing: No. I was too old by then. I went down to Houston and did the week-long interview, and I was in the– You know how they do the selection, right? Groups of 20. So in my year, they did 6 to 20. I was in the first of the 20. I was one of three women, one of only five civilians, and one of maybe three PhDs.
Dr. Sandra Magnus: What year was that?
Vicky Benzing: 1997.
Dr. Sandra Magnus: Wow. I was selected in the ‘96 class. I was interviewing for the class after mine.
Vicky Benzing: I have a vision defect that I never knew I had. So at the end of the week, I was told that I couldn't pass flight school because of my vision defect.
Sandy Winnefeld: So let me get this straight. You can do aerobatics all the way down to the surface, but you can't be an astronaut? How many hundred miles into space?
Dr. Sandra Magnus: I am so sorry.
Vicky Benzing: But think about this - it would be like manipulating the Hubble telescope in the cargo bay of the shuttle and jamming it into the back wall.
Dr. Sandra Magnus: That doesn’t interfere with your aerobatics flying at all.
Vicky Benzing: No because to see depth or judge depth involved more than just how your eyes point which is my vision defect thing. It involved how you move your head, light and dark- I strategically couldn’t pass the Verhoeff Test, if you remember what that is. They put it up there and I was like, “Well, which one is front, back?” Right? “The one on the right.”
Sandy Winnefeld: So Vicky, you fly a whole bunch of different airplanes.
Vicky Benzing: I do.
Sandy Winnefeld: Let’s pick one, the Extra 300L which has a 400° per second roll rate, can handle 10 G’s. I’ve handled a lot of G’s but never 10 G’s. What’s it like maneuvering that airplane and what does it take to handle those high G forces?
Vicky Benzing: It takes a lot of practice, mainly for the negative G's. The positive G's, not too much. You get G’ed up pretty quickly. I used to have a two-seat Extra 300L, but now I have a single-seat Extra 300S. And because it has so much power, I fly a Stearman too, it makes up for not perfect flying, you get away with a lot because you have a lot of extra energy. You don’t have to do the energy management so well. Or because it rolls so well, you really don’t have to use the rudder in the roll. You can just do stick all the way over and and it will roll just fine - so on a line. So obviously the stopping and the roll is on point and it’s challenging. I did all of my contest flying pretty much in the Extra. I used to train with Elena Klomovich, one of the Russian coaches. And she’d get up there and we would have to do maybe on a downline eight-point rolls when we stop. And I would over-rotate them and stuff and she would just get frustrated, like stop faster.
Sandy Winnefeld: Stop faster.
Dr. Sandra Magnus: What?
Vicky Benzing: And the thick portion is very light so getting the L on centered is– It’s easy to over-rotate. So you flip it over and maybe like do this and you do this and it’s very obvious to the judges. So you have to learn to just take what you got and not fix it.
Sandy Winnefeld: Just very briefly, how many negative G's are you typically pulling in an aerobatic demonstration?
Vicky Benzing: I don't really fly the Extra much in anymore in air shows. I think the last air show I flew in it was last year. But I typically don’t offer it as an airshow plane anymore. Mainly because it needed and it takes a lot of practice, G tolerance, and it’s hard to use an air show airplane that requires so much training. But typically, I would hit 10 G's on the positive and I would take it on the negative. My G meter goes to -5, so I don’t know exactly how it wasn’t a whole lot more than -5. But if you want it to look good, you have to use a lot of Gs to make the maneuver sharp.
Dr. Sandra Magnus: The snap.
Vicky Benzing: Yeah.
Dr. Sandra Magnus: Culligan Water is the ultimate health drink. And it's not just about having good enough water. You deserve water you love.
Sandy Winnefeld: With Culligan's filtration systems, you can get superior quality and purer tasting, ultra refreshing hydration you can count on to power your performance. Their smart reverse osmosis systems take it to the next level helping you set hydration goals, track how much you’re drinking, and even see what contaminants are reduced in your water. So you know you're always getting the exceptional water you need to truly feel good inside and out, ready to face the day and whatever challenges it brings.
Dr. Sandra Magnus:Learn more at culligan.com.
Dr. Sandra Magnus: On a related note, what exactly is a surface level aerobatic waiver and how do you get one and when do you need one?
Vicky Benzing: Well, to do demonstration down to the surface, you have to have one. So the way the program works starts out at 800 ft and with aerobatics, 800 feet and you have to do a certain number of shows at that altitude before you can go down to 500 feetThen, you have to do more shows at that altitude before you can go down to 250 feet. So many performances at so many different venues then you go down the surface.
Dr. Sandra Magnus: Wow.
Vicky Benzing: It usually takes, I don’t know, it depends on how many shows you can book through a year, but it make take you three or four years to get to the surface from starting out at 800 ft. And of course, if you’re competent, you have to pass an aerobatic competency evaluation every year. It's a self-regulated industry and the International Council of Air Shows has what they call aerobatic competency evaluators. I’m an aerobatic competency evaluator. And each person who has waiver to do an aerobatics lower or a waiver aerospace has to do an evaluation in front of an aerobatic competency evaluator.
Dr. Sandra Magnus: Is the international aerobatic community very large?
Vicky Benzing: No, not really. The International Aerobatic Club itself has about 4000 members, and over the 4000 members, I'm not sure how many are active contest pilots. But if I I were to just guess, it would be 500 or so.
Dr. Sandra Magnus: About 10%.
Vicky Benzing: Yeah. Because even the national and international they get less than 100 pilots per year. And for professional air show pilots, I don’t know how many pilots have a waiver but it’s certainly under 200. Probably between 100 and 200. It is a very small community.
Sandy Winnefeld: I got two questions. What is your favorite aerobatic maneuver to do, and what is the most difficult aerobatic maneuver to do and maybe they’re the same for all I know?
Vicky Benzing: Boy.That's a good question. I have always liked loops. They’re just simple, but they are very elegant and fun to fly because you’re looking up and down and you look at the ground and it’s just a beautiful figure. I think one of the hard figures to fly is often the very simple figure which is the hammerhead. The hammerhead if you don't do it right can result in an inverted flat spin. It can be a dangerous maneuver in the Stearman which I fly regularly in air shows. It doesn’t have a huge upline before it runs out of energy. And if I let it get too slow, the engine will torque, and you want to keep the airplane in the plane. With a hammerhead, the engine torque it off. So I think that’s probably of all the figures in my takeaway for that maybe the most challenging one is the hammerhead. But of course, it’s the loops that can kill you at the surface because if you misjudged, the more you don’t have enough energy at the bottom or enough altitude at the top. You’re going to hit the ground.
Dr. Sandra Magnus: That’s a bad place to be.
Vicky Benzing: And the reverse Half Cubans are the same thing. In my Stearman in the airshow, I have one loop and two Half Cubans.
Sandy Winnefeld: And when it comes to the ground, you can only tie the record, right?
Vicky Benzing: Yeah. You could only tie the record.
Dr. Sandra Magnus: You mentioned inverted flat spins, but you have an aviation world record for inverted flat spins.
Vicky Benzing: No, not me.
Dr. Sandra Magnus: No? I thought I read that somewhere.
Vicky Benzing: I think Spencer Suderman has that record. And Wayne Hundley had it before him. I have a record for being the fastest woman at Reno.
Dr. Sandra Magnus: That's a better record.
Sandy Winnefeld: So your record is pretty impressive. It was, what, 469 miles per hour, something like that. We're sort of switching gears, but how does that air racing sport actually work? Because not a lot of our listeners may be familiar with that. And then what kind of airplane do you race in?
Vicky Benzing: Okay. Well, it's closed-course air racing, of which there was, we had the last Reno air race summer, but it was the only venue in the world for closed-course air racing. We race eight planes at a time around pylons in an eight-point-something-mile course, which takes, depending on the speed of the airplane, if you're going 470 miles an hour, around a minute. If you're going about 300 miles an hour, it's maybe a minute, 20 and 25. Like that.
Dr. Sandra Magnus: It's a short but fast race.
Vicky Benzing: Yeah. With a bunch of your buddies wanting to pass you. So the way the racing works is we all take off in order of speed, so we qualify. We qualify on the course to get a speed, then we all take off in order of speed, and we join up on a pace plane. And so there'll be a pace plane, and then there'll be eight planes going out from the pace plane. And then we all come down onto the race course about a 30-degree angle into the first pylon, which is pylon 4. And if the pace plane sets it up right, you're making it just a slight turn in, which helps to spread the field a little bit. We call this the shoot. The shoot is generally not a good place to pass because it's dangerous. But then we pull around the course, we apply six laps and then checker flag, and we all come off the race course going to cool down and land.
So I've been racing at Reno since 2010, and I started racing in sport class in a Glassair III, and then later a Lancer Legacy. And I've raced every year in sport class. In 2014, I started racing jets. In 2015, I set the record as the fastest woman on the race course. And then this last year, I raced a P-51 and I ended up in fourth place.
Sandy Winnefeld: Are the jets all the same? I would think there are performance differences, or is it strictly pilot capability that wins this thing?
Vicky Benzing: No, there are performance differences. So there are different jets. There are rules as to which jets can be on the race course. They can't be swept-wing, they can't have the afterburner. There are bunch of them. A large fraction of the jets are either L-29s or L-39s. And the best way to make them faster is to make them lighter because you're accelerating, because you're going around in a circle, so weight really matters. So a lot of them take out pretty much everything from the jet to make it as light as possible, and then turn up the fuel control on the engine so they can run PM on the engine. So that's kind of how they spread out. They also re-engine some of the jets with bigger engines.
Sandy Winnefeld: Big money.
Vicky Benzing: And in a large part, it’s who wins is who brought what, especially who brought what that year. It costs a lot of money to win and to bring something that’s a well race engine, especially in the unlimited. Those race engines can be half a million bucks. But then if they're close, pilot skill, of course, matters.
Dr. Sandra Magnus: So you mentioned that you've raced in your P-51 and we talked about the fact that you're refurbishing it at the moment. So what else do you have planned for that airplane?
Vicky Benzing: Oh, I'm planning to do airshows. It's actually a very famous P-51. It was owned by Clay Lacy, and he campaigned it at Reno from 1964 to 1972. It's in Papal livery, which is unusual for a P-51. The story behind the Papal is that the airplane was purchased to race in 1964 by Al Paulson, founder of Gulfstream, and he was Clay's friend. And at the time, Al had this fleet of Constellations that he was going to use for an airline between Van Ives and Hawaii, and he was going to call it Orchid Airlines. And his wife said, "Hey, since you're calling it Orchid Airlines, you ought to paint a purple stripe on the side of the airline." So he ordered 150 gallons of purple paint, and it was custom orchid purple paint, and they received 1500 gallons of purple paint. And so the toolboxes and the ladders and the Mustang all got painted purple. But it became a very iconic airplane, so it was really well-known among the race fans. And also Clay brought it to a lot of airshows. It became really popular with young people at the time.
I bought it in 2019, and I flew it for about 25 hours. I took it to Reno in 2019 just to put it on display. And then after Reno, I took it down to Fighter Rebuilders to be restored, and we repainted it in the purple livery and I brought it to Reno this year. The response from the fans was just overwhelming. Many people brought pictures of themselves standing by that airplane when they were little kids, standing under the wing.
Dr. Sandra Magnus: Oh, my God.
Vicky Benzing: It has its own fan club. It has such a following that I just hope that putting it on the airshow circuit in the future will inspire the next generation the same way that it did for this generation of people and pilots.
Dr. Sandra Magnus: That's a pretty cool story.
Vicky Benzing: Yeah. The one lady went out to Orchard and brought us. I named the plane Plum Crazy, and she went out to her orchard and picked a bushel of plums. You brought them in for us.
Sandy Winnefeld: Don't eat too many of those. So you and your Stearman are movie stars and TV stars.
Vicky Benzing: We are.
Sandy Winnefeld: What exactly does that involve? Tell us about that.
Vicky Benzing: Well, the Stearman. I've done a couple of projects with the Stearman. I did the Mercury 13, the Netflix film, the one about the would-be astronauts. I guess the gals that went through the whole flight-to-people program back in the days of the Mercury program. And through that, I got to meet Wally Funk, which is pretty cool because she flew the Stearman. So I was basically the stunt double for Wally in that movie. And that film led to doing a number of other projects that use both the Stearman and also my King Air. The aerial coordinator that was on Mercury 13 has brought me out for a couple of other things.
We were on NCIS LA, last spring I took the Stearman and the King Air out to Texas to do an episode of Walker, Texas Ranger, which was kind of funny because it was at this private airfield and the runway was literally, like, 2 feet wider than the King Air's landing gear on each side. And it was wet, so I couldn't get off of the pavement, and there was no place. And they wanted me to go up and down the runway, but there was no place to turn around. The taxiways were very narrow, and I'd have to have someone guide me on the taxiways to keep the wheels in the right spot to clear the trees on the edge. I figured out that the King Air’s got reverse
Sandy Winnefeld: Back it up.
Vicky Benzing: You need to turn, reverse, turn.
Dr. Sandra Magnus: Three-point turn in an airplane. You need to get the purple P-51 into a movie somewhere. That would be great.
Vicky Benzing: The airplane has been in a movie. Well, it was on an episode of Magnum PI.
Dr. Sandra Magnus: Oh, wow.
Sandy Winnefeld: Yeah, of course.
Dr. Sandra Magnus: I'd like to go back to something you said earlier. You talked about parachute jumps. I actually did one just in case we ever had to eject out of a T-38 to figure out what that would be like. But you've got over 1300 parachute jumps. Do you still do that? Because that clearly is a huge interest of yours, or did you perform there, too?
Vicky Benzing: Yeah, it's always been an interest. For a while, I was keeping pace with the number of flight hours and jumps. But then the flight hours took off. I jumped through the years, but I haven't jumped since the pandemic and I put a little weight on. So I bought a new parachute with the idea of jumping again. I've been busy with airships, but now I have a new parachute we’re going to go jump in the fall. I really do miss it.
Dr. Sandra Magnus: It was quite the sense of freedom. I totally get why you like it.
Vicky Benzing: Yeah, I loved it. Ultimately, I got really busy with my career and something had to give. So I kept flying, but the number of jumps I made per year wasn't large. But I still love jumping and I really love jumping.
Sandy Winnefeld: You have overcome any obstacles that might have been related to the fact that you are a woman pilot. You have crashed through those. But what were some of those challenges, particularly when you were younger? We talked about that a little bit earlier, but did you feel there were a lot of barriers you really had to overcome? Or did you just get in your airplane and do it better than anybody else?
Vicky Benzing: It seems to me that the guys liked having women around. I mean, how boring is it to just be a bunch of guys, right? I didn't really feel like I was unwanted. There weren't very many women. On the radio, you hardly ever heard a woman's voice when I first started flying. But there are more and more now, which is wonderful. I don't know if I could say that there were any barriers. Sometimes, like in racing, the guys like to race with you, but they just don't want to be beaten by you because then they get beat by the girl, right?
Sandy Winnefeld: Yeah, you got to get over that.
Vicky Benzing: Yeah, I never really thought of myself as not one of the guys until one day it came out that one of the guys was teasing the other guy because he kept losing to me. And then I subsequently found out that was kind of good for you.
Dr. Sandra Magnus: Yeah, good for you.
Vicky Benzing: But it kind of hurt my feelings because I guess I just never really thought about myself as not being one of the guys. I don't know that there were obstacles that I had to overcome in that respect. I will say that career-wise, when I was young, I thought that you had to decide between having a family and having a career. Getting your PhD and having a career in industry, I just really didn't see that I could do both. There weren't any examples of people doing both. Nowadays, you see examples of that. You see women like Marissa Mayer, who's out at Google, has a family, and influences all this stuff. And I think, "Wow, that's really cool." I wish I had had a role model when I was younger. A woman who did it all because I did miss out on a part of life that maybe I could have had. But then again, maybe I wouldn't have done so many things in my lifetime if I had a family.
Dr. Sandra Magnus: Along that line, what advice would you give young girls who are interested in becoming pilots and doing some of the things that you have done?
Vicky Benzing: You can have it all. Absolutely. You don't have to make those choices, but you can have it all. And I think companies, airlines, and the military have come to realize that women need to have the time to have a family life and be able to participate in a career. And if they don't, those organizations are missing out on, like, half of humanity. We make up half, 50% of their potential market, right?
Sandy Winnefeld: In the military, this was not only the right thing for us to do, we had to do it because it vastly increased our recruiting pool on both the officer and enlisted side. You'd like to think it was all virtuous, but it was partly a necessity.
Dr. Sandra Magnus: Absolutely.
Sandy Winnefeld: So, Vic, where do you see the future of aerobatic flight going in the next five or ten years? Are there any changes coming down the line? Anything new that's out there that's going to delight audiences at air shows that we haven't seen before?
Vicky Benzing: Gosh, that's a really good question. I think air shows are really wonderful, and it's great to see more and more women participating in the air show. The military is a big component of that, so we're seeing more and more women as demo pilots at air shows.
Sandy Winnefeld: We have our first female Blue Angel slot solo pilot. She's awesome.
Vicky Benzing: Yeah, we have Beo, Major System. I think Beo Wolfe is the F-35 demo pilot and Rebel Wilson is the F-16 demo pilot. They're both women, and they just tear up the sky. And I think it's such a great role model for young women out there. So I think it's exciting to see that come about. And I think that's a huge contribution to young women in general. I hope to see more participation in a more diverse pilot group, too. So I think that would also be a big thing for air shows to embrace. As far as aircraft go, I don't know. I couldn't tell you. I mean, there are always new aerobatic aircraft that come out.
Sandy Winnefeld: Well, Vicky, this has been a fantastic conversation. I've really been looking forward to this, to be honest with you. We had to wait until the Reno Air Races were over and everybody came off their cruises and did all that. But it's really cool to talk to somebody who gets to have so much fun every day.
Vicky Benzing: Yeah, well, you kind of have to make that for yourself, right?
Sandy Winnefeld: Well, be safe out there and enjoy your new P-51 when it comes back all decked out in its Papal livery.
Vicky Benzing: Thank you.
Sandy Winnefeld: And we'll be looking for you at the airshows.
Vicky Benzing: Yep, I'll be out there.
Sandy Winnefeld: All right, thanks a lot.
Vicky Benzing: Thank you, guys.
Dr. Sandra Magnus: That was aerobatic pilot, air racer, and all-around amazing pilot Vicky Benzing. I'm Sandra Magnus.
Sandy Winnefeld: And I'm Sandy Winnefeld. Thanks again to Culligan Water for sponsoring this episode. Your life is about taking risks. Your water shouldn't be. Learn more at culligan.com.
Dr. Sandra Magnus:Please pass our podcast around to your friends, and we'll see you next week with another fun and interesting episode of The Adrenaline Zone.
