99s Fly!

Engaging Seminars at our Annual Section Meeting

October 9, 2016

On the morning of September 16, 2016, some fortunate 99s got to hear two seminars relating to local flying and achieving the goals we set our minds to. Here's a bit about what you may have missed.

The first seminar was by Karlene Pettit, shown at the end of this article with Past Governor Andrea Chay in front of our section's 99s quilt, which was completed by the Montana Chapter and displayed all weekend. Karlene is an airline pilot and instructor on Boeing jets, 37-year veteran of flying, and author of three novels, a children's book, and the motivational book Flight to Success, Be the Captain of Your Life.

Her talk was entitled "Be the Captain of Your Life." She spelled out the acronym CAPTAIN, with a couple of extra Cs thrown in for good measure, as follows:

• Confidence
• Courage
• Commitment (Unless commitment is made, there are only promises and hopes . . . but no plans." --Peter Drucker)
• Assertiveness
• Preparation
• Trust but verify
• Attitude
• Identity
• Never give up

Her other mnemonic was Flight Plan Your Life. You'll have to read the book to find out more! She also recommended we all read Norah O'Neill's Flying Tigress: A Memoir (Ascending Journey Press, 2005).

The second seminar was by Allen Kam, meteorologist with the National Weather Service (NWS) for more than 30 years and also a private pilot.

He explained the "Puget Sound Convergence Zone," and one of us took some brief notes. PAE and Southwest Snohomish county get 48 inches of precipitation annually, where north Seattle and Everett proper get about 38 inches.

The NWS uses pressure gradients between certain pairs of airports in their predictions. For the Puget Sound, the relevant pairs are UIL-BLI, PDX-BLI, and OLM-BLI. These are available to us on the NWS Seattle website, under Additional Observations, which you can get to via weather.gov.

Different winds push the Puget Sound Convergence Zone into Mt Vernon-Arlington, Lynnwood, Seattle or cause heavy snow at Stevens Pass.