SPRINGDALE — Camelia Smith and Laura Berry are flying high today — roughly 1, 000 feet off the ground.
They’re on the first leg of a race among female pilots that will take them from Montana to Massachusetts. The women are the only ones from Arkansas competing in this year’s Air Race Classic, a transcontinental race over 2, 009 nautical miles. The 36 teams have four days — until sunset Friday — to complete the course. This race is Berry’s first. Smith flew with a different partner in last year’s race. She hopes to improve on her 16 th-place finish.
Berry has logged about 300 hours of flying time; Smith has about 10, 000 hours.
The women are flying in Smith’s 1979 Cessna 182 RG, which has retractable gear and its original brown and rust stripes running down the sides. Smith, of Hindsville, bought the plane two years ago just for the Air Race Classic.
The women are following in some impressive tracks. Louise Thaden, a Bentonville native, flew in the first incarnation of this transcontinental race, the Women’s Air Derby, also known as the Powder Puff Derby, in 1929. In that trip, from Santa Monica, Calif., to Cleveland, Thaden beat her rivals — including Amelia Earhart.
Smith treasures a photograph of herself with other members of the Arkansas chapter of Ninety-Nines, including Thaden, taken in 1976. Earhart and Thaden founded the international organization for female pilots in 1930. The Bentonville airport’s field bears Thaden’s name.
LEARNING TO FLY Smith’s husband, Bill, who is also a pilot, met Berry first, at the airport in Flippin. He told his wife about Berry because there aren’t many women who fly in the area. The women met about three years ago when Berry took her plane to the Springdale airport for maintenance. A Dallas native, Berry has lived in Harrison for 20 years. She got interested in flying because she likes to travel and “Harrison is hard to get out of,” she says. Her husband’s family lives nine hours away in Kentucky, and flying makes visiting them faster. That’s the farthest she’d flown before the race.
“It was kind of a lifelong passion,” Berry, 53, says of flying.
Her father always wanted to fly, and talked about it for years. When he was about 70, it struck her that he wasn’t going to do it. She was in her mid-40 s then, and she realized that if she was going to learn, she should get started. Now, she takes him flying.
In the summer of 2003, she juggled flying lessons with work. She got up about 5 a.m. and drove an hour to Mountain Home for flight instruction. She returned to Harrison by 8: 30 or 9 a. m., in time for her job at North Arkansas College, where she is dean of arts and sciences.
Berry has a Cessna 172, built in 1976. It has fixed rather than retractable gears, and doesn’t carry as much or go as fast as Smith’s plane.
Smith started flying in 1971, soon after she and her husband were hanging out with friends at Beaver Lake. One friend mentioned that he’d taken a flying lesson the day before. Her husband decided to go with the friend the next couple of times, but Smith wasn’t invited.
She took matters into her own hands. She wanted to try something new and started thinking about all the places she could go.
“It never occurred to me that I would enjoy the actual doing of it,” she says. “So as it turned out, the getting there was just as exciting as the destination.” She and her husband have since gone to many places, including Canada, Mexico and the Bahamas — which, by air, is about six hours from Springdale.
“We’ve gone every place that a small airplane could go without crossing the ocean,” Smith says. “You become very spoiled because you’re flying in a totally different environment.” Though the small planes fly “slower and lower” than commercial flights, they often arrive just as soon and with less hassle, she says. And she and her husband take turns at the controls.
Smith took lessons at the Rogers airport. As soon as she sat in the airplane, she was hooked. After about 12 hours of instruction, she flew solo for the first time.
“I think everyone remembers their first solo, when you look in that right seat and it’s empty, and it’s only you,” she says.
Smith and her husband had the same flight instructor. They got private pilot’s licenses and both had air charter services for several years. She used to fly lawyers to Jonesboro. She also did some flight instruction and fire detection for the National Forest Service and the state. The last several years, before mostly retiring, she did corporate flying for people who own but don’t fly their own airplanes. That took her all across the country.
“I loved working because I loved going,” she says.
Smith still can’t define why flying appeals to her, but says, “It’s almost like an addiction.” The women, both mothers of two, want to encourage others with a passion for flying to pursue it.
“We’re not rich; we enjoy flying,” Berry says.
A pilot might have to forgo having a new car to maintain her airplane, Berry says. Smith started her air taxi service years ago “to justify my habit.” MONTANA TO MASSACHUSETTS Smith had worked as a timer on six occasions at various airports during races. If she was ever going to race, Bill said, it was time. She had the plane but didn’t have a partner, so she advertised the airplane in a flying publication to sell it. The woman who responded to the ad was in Lafayette, La.
They took the plane there, but once she and the woman started talking, they decided to fly together in last year’s race.
When she started thinking about this year’s race, Smith remembered Berry and called her.
This year, Smith is experienced with how the race works.
“There are times it’s very, very intense, and a lot of things happen very fast, and it really does take two people,” Smith says. “And both positions are very busy.” Smith knows Berry is very organized. Smith also jokes that she chose Berry for her petite size, so they might fly a little faster. They planned to pack light, wearing some clothing more than once.
“There is a lot of strategy to it,” Smith says, such as knowing what kind of weather to fly in.
They left Arkansas on Thursday and had to arrive in Montana on Saturday morning for the plane to be inspected. The plane was impounded until the start of the race today.
During the trip, the women will fly for a total of 33 or 34 hours, including getting to and from the course.
It was 1, 000 miles to Bozeman, Mont. They’ll fly the 2, 009 nautical miles of the race itself, ending up in Mansfield, Mass., for an awards banquet. They’ll fly the more than 1, 000 nautical miles back home. A regular mile is 15 percent longer than a nautical mile.
Each plane in the race was given a preset handicapped speed, and the pilots try to fly faster than that handicap. The handicap for Smith’s plane is 165 mph or 140. 77 knots — or nautical miles per hour.
“You’re racing against yourself,” Smith says.
There are three other airplanes like Smith’s in the race this year, so she feels like they’re racing against those, too. An airplane like hers won last year’s race, which ran from Oklahoma City to St. John, New Brunswick, Canada.
Smith and Berry plan to update their Web log along the route: www. airraceclassic 28. com. Their sponsors, who helped with fuel expenses, are listed there as well.
To fly in the race, the plane has to run at maximum continuous power.
“They push them wide open and leave them until they stop,” Bill Smith says.
The women will fly lower than normal for the race.
“The lower you are, the more power the engine can develop,” he says.
Though she completed last year’s race in three days, Camelia Smith says bad weather or mechanical problems could cause a team to need all four days. Contestants can fly only between sunrise and sunset and during good weather conditions.
There are instructions for each checkpoint and how to fly by, usually at 200 feet above ground. They are timed at each checkpoint. The pilots then either land at one of the small airports or continue flying.
There are many rules to remember and ways to be penalized. Most of these are designed to make sure pilots are safe and flying on an equal basis, the women say.
Smith called a friend who flew last year for her best advice — use a professional weather service. The women are using that service to save stress and hassle.
To train, Smith and Berry flew several practice, timed routes.
“A lot of it is just logistics of the flying. We’ve spent an awful lot of time planning how we’re going to get there and where we’re going to stay — really some pretty mundane things that have to be done,” Berry says.
Also, Berry got accustomed to using the equipment in Smith’s plane, which is “quite a bit fancier than mine.” It has a mobile Global Positioning System for aviation.
Last year, the first time Smith competed in the race, she and her partner didn’t know the intricacies involved.
They didn’t know they’d finish 16 th among the 48 entries. They didn’t know they’d log a race time of about 17 1 / 2 hours over three days.
But they did know the fundamentals of their task.
“We were just flying,” Smith says.
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