Pilot Profile
Cathy Page
I'm a STOL Drag racer and an aviation junkie! I received my private pilot license two days before my 25th birthday. 11 months later I became an aircraft owner. I've been flying ever since. When I began taking flying lessons that summer oh so long ago I had a goal, mainly to immerse myself into my Dad's hobby that he had taken up a few years earlier. I wanted to spend more time with him and this seemed like a good way to do that. Thank you, Dad, for starting me down this road less traveled. I thought pilots came from a different bolt of cloth, a different educational background, and a much different and wealthier world than I was in, but I jumped in anyway, determined to attempt to get my license before the summer ended and before I ran out of time and money. I had saved up a fixed amount and knew I would learn more efficiently if I flew frequently.
Once I got my license later that summer I began meeting others who flew and I discovered that many of them were just like me. Average blue-collar workers who like me got some exposure to general aviation and once saw a path to get their private license, did so. I learned that buying an old airplane cost about the same as buying a new/economy car. I made a budget, realized what sort of monthly payment I could afford, took out a loan, and bought a 1953 Cessna 170B. I had no thoughts of becoming a professional pilot at all. I still assumed those careers were left to people from a different station in life. Sometimes when a young person sees a successful adult they think that person was always like that but the truth for most of us is that we created what we've become in life by simply putting 1 foot in front of the other. That summer when I got my license and the following year when I bought that first airplane I was working construction as a steamfitter apprentice. I couldn't really even imagine myself as a pilot and I surely didn't imagine myself as an aircraft owner but I did see some of the initial steps to getting my pilot's license and each step led to another. So over the years, I continued to just move forward and see more opportunities that involved flying. After about four years of flying my Cessna on evenings, weekends and vacations, etc. I realized that I might be able to make a career change after all.
If you said to that 25-year-old me, "Cathy you're going to get a pilot license. You're going to buy an airplane. You're going to abandon this hard-earned journeyman steamfitter card and this building trade. You're going to pursue aviation as a career and go wherever it leads and it's going to lead you to the airlines. You're going to meet the most amazing people, whose background is so different than yours and you're going to fit in with those very same people because all of you have the same passion for flight", well I would have said you were crazy. As I look back today to the person I was then, I can hardly believe where aviation has taken me and who I've become since those early days as a steamfitter. Those early flying lessons led me to grow into a person I didn't know I could be. I am grateful beyond description. I've met so many extraordinary people along this journey. Flying redirected my path in life to a place in time, mind, spirit, and soul I could not have dreamed. I pinch myself every day. General aviation is where I began and it's where my heart lies.
For The past several years I've been a STOLDrag racer and I absolutely love it. It was created by Kevin Quinn and first appeared at Kevin's High Sierra fly-in in northern Nevada about 9 years ago. Kevin and his team of many, have grown STOLDrag and it's been a part of the Reno National Air Races since 2019. I recently replaced my PA16 Clipper with a Cubcrafters Carbon Cub FX2. It is a formidable aircraft in STOLDrag as well as the backcountry and I absolutely love flying it. I also fly the backcountry "out west" and get to enjoy some of the best country on this planet. You'll see me and my new Carbon Cub at a STOL event soon and in the mountains of the western US.
Airplane Statistics:
Type: Carbon Cub
Year: 2022
Misc: - Coming Soon -
