Jill. I found this video on youtube and really enjoyed it. I was at RAF Lakenheath in the same squadron with your dad in '69-'72 so I am sure I met you there. I am an old F-100 fighter pilot and get to visit with your dad every two years at the reunion of the Super Sabre Society. Tell him I said hello. Keep talking aviation.....Jerry Key
Thanks for posting this. I am an engineer, pilot, and airplane builder... I heard her father speak at Oshkosh Airventure 2018 Convention Fly-In. Many years before (20 yrs ago), again at the EAA Oshkosh fly-in, I flew my airplane I built to the event. I went the the Home builders dinner. Sitting across from me was Mrs. Rutan, mother of Burt and Dick Rutan...
Jill. I still have your book I bought from you at Oshkosh. I contributed to this project only money. Way back in the day. I was at the take off and landing with my friend Peter Garrison. Thanks for this video.
I've watched this video before, but I love hearing the story from her perspective. The flight was very inspirational to me. I got to see the plane in DC a couple of years back with my kids and it was hard to fight back the tears. I enjoy the way you narrate the flight....Wonderful
Such a brilliant and charming lady. Fascinating presentation. Incidentally, another quirk of the regulations, at the time FAA regs. considered the Voyager flight a local flight. They took off and landed at the same airport on the same flight.
Thank you Jill and PeninsulaSrs! Got a print of the Voyager signed by Dick at the Oregon Air Fair in Albany, Oregon 10+ years ago. I think it was a leg that he had in a cast from a recent motorcycle accident :-) I wished I could have gotten around the polite handshake and just given him a hug. He and Burt...Just WOW! And plans-built/scratch-built balsa is the way to go!
Great history; here in Spain we had brief reports of the flight in the mid day news and night news of the public TV, it made many of us, that were kids back then to think in the sky and Karl Sagan (he had a night TV show) made us think in the space. Booth made us think in the world and what we can do as a specie.
Back in in 1989 (I think) I was at Oshkosh fly in and went to Burt's tent to hear him talk. It was the highlight of my trip. I also had him and Jenna and Dick sign my just purchased copy of their book Chronicling their Voyager flight around the world. Even ran in to Burts and Jills parents in the parking lot. I knew this because the father wanted to tell me this fact as a proud parent would.
PenninsulaSrsVideos you have some of the coolest presentations/speakers! It was a pleasure to meet Dick at the Oregon Air Fair in Albany, Oregon a whole bunch of years ago. I forget if it was a leg or arm that was in a cast but I asked how'd it happen and he kinda sheepishly said '...uh, a little accident on the motorcycle.' Thinking about it now, the way he answered it (to me Joe Nobody) I'd bet there's a story behind that accident ;-) Thank you Jill for these stories!
Enjoyed the stories, as a Rutan kit builder and a home schooling family (academic reasons, primarily). IF found please return to Irene Rutan. LOL. At just about ANY (especially EAA) airshow, later in her life, if an attendee found it, they would figure out how to get it back to her POST HASTE! As a LongEZ builder and engineer I have great respect for the accomplishments of the Rutans...and don't count out Dick, as among many other things, he piloted the Voyager nonstop around the world with his girlfriend Jeanna. I heard a story that one of them, not sure which, recovered an F4 phantom from a flat spin, and was the only one to do it. Not sure if it's true, but wouldn't surprise me, innovative in every way aero, those "boys". ;-)
I'm still surprised nobody has flown around the world but by crossing both the North and South poles. Your crossing the main jet streams instead of lying with them.
