Audrey Dwyer: A visceral experience above the Yampa Valley

Reporter Audrey Dwyer before she goes up in the sky with Dagmar Kress on Friday afternoon for a practice flight before the Wild West Air Fest tomorrow. Kress will be one of the performers in the show. 

Steamboat Springs — If you were looking up at the sky Friday around noon, you may have seen a small ruby red plane performing rolls and one of those big loop-de-loops. I happened to be flying that plane at that time.

Never ever having flown in a tiny plane like that before, I didn’t really know what to expect. Dagmar Kress was my pilot for the day, and I put quite a lot of trust in her. But how could I not with the credentials like her’s as an International World Aerobatic Champion competing for the United States but also for Germany, where she is from? Let’s not forget that she is one of the world’s top female aerobatic pilots as well.

To give some perspective on what Kress does, she will basically fly upside down at 5,000 feet or more with only a five-point seat belt and a plastic bubble above her head as a shield between her and the ground.

For her it was a ride in a biplane for the first time that had her hooked on flying. She became a certified flight instructor, and then soon after she learned aerobatics. She has been performing tricks at great heights for about 30 years now.

“I mean I could say silly things like 'I can’t fly straight,'” she said about why she loves flying. “No, I like it; it’s that peace and freedom element. You can go up and down and just be weightless.”

On Saturday and Sunday this weekend you can catch her in the beautiful red Pitts for the Wild West Air Fest. She will also perform with the Rocky Mountain Renegades as well as Don Nelson in his Sukhoi. Judging from the her warm-up flight earlier in the day, it’s going to be quite the show.

At least she turned my world upside down.

Before we even left the ground and were going over the precautions — meaning how to use my parachute, yes parachute — she had me take over the control stick and perform a roll to the left then one to the right.

“You can do it, just keep turning it to the left,” she said to me as we were in flight and I was trying not to crash the plane.

Then she took back control of the Pitts S2C biplane and said, “OK, now we are going to do a loop.” Luckily I wasn’t feeling sick or else this story could have taken a completely different turn.

It was a weightless feeling and before I knew it I was upside down performing a vertical circle of sorts and the only thing keeping me safe was the seat belt tightly fastened. The sky and ground began to blur into one and it was a very visceral feeling. With my stomach lurching and my perception of up and down a bit blurred, I realized that flying wasn’t all that bad.

“It’s not too hard, you saw that,” Kress said. “It’s really not that tough, you just learn it like any other discipline.”

Before I left the ground, I was told to just breathe and stay calm. Well, like most things in life, we all psyche ourselves out. So after I heard that, I kept repeating it the whole time we were in the air. Luckily it worked, minus the bit of dizziness I experienced. Or maybe it was just the seemingly endless amount of adrenaline that was pumping through me.

Flying above the Yampa Valley, I saw it in a way that I’ve never experienced or even thought to see before. It’s not the same when you are standing at the top of a mountain looking down. It was utterly breathtaking from the front seat of the cockpit in this tiny yet powerful biplane. The mountains were endless into the horizon and the colors of the rolling hills were stunning.

As I sit at my desk — hands slightly still shaking from the aftereffects of it all — I can’t believe that just happened a few hours ago. Kress is a talented and fearless woman. In a sport that is both dangerous and dominated by men, she has had a long record of success. I am honored that I had the opportunity to fly with her and will never forget this moment.

- Source:  http://www.steamboattoday.com