Our many RAF supporters have such vast and varied experience, and we’re capturing some of their words of wisdom to share with you. This month’s guest editorial is by Carmine Mowbray, a pilot and the RAF’s Publicity Liaison.
WORTH THE READ: CARMINE MOWBRAY GUEST EDITORIAL
When the owner of the local FBO ordered fancy printing from our little Montana print shop and couldn’t pay his bill, he agreed to teach my husband and me how to get an airplane in the sky and back on the ground safely. We decided to buy an airplane and the CFI located a 1957 150-hp TriPacer. I was so ignorant, I was expecting a tri-motor. When 6928-Delta puttered in off the runway, I fell in love with our simple fabric, tricycle gear four-seat single.
It was paper chart, watch, and E6B days. You planned cross-county flights by penciling in your waypoints. Being surrounded by mountains, our CFI was a stickler about slow flight and preached, “Every landing is a short-field landing!” Training I appreciate today.
Near Montana’s Continental Divide, winters are cold but pretty clear. We could fly nearly all year. Avgas was 57¢ a gallon, and our banker let us park in his old hangar for free. As some do, we coveted that ever-faster, sleeker aircraft, and eventually owned and flew retractables, then a 300-hp Turbo T-Tail Lance for 16 years. It was great for business and long cross-countries with the four kids. But I felt the best way to see the West was around a hundred knots, a few hundred feet over the high ground. Where you see spray off a waterfall; mountain goats trekking the ledges; a small herd of elk grazing, or the circular ripples surrounding a moose in a pond. My heart was always back at places like Meadow Creek beneath the massive limestone terraces, where we had spent a soggy three-day Memorial Day weekend in a pup tent waiting for the rain to stop. “If this is so miserable, why am I enjoying it so much?” I’d asked myself.
RAF co-founder Chuck Jarecki stopped often at my Polson home for coffee and to share flying stories. He flew me to a few Montana work parties where I joined upbeat volunteers. Whether it was chopping sagebrush, clearing encroaching trees, throwing rocks, digging postholes or privy holes, we had fun. We were making something better.
Chuck asked me to edit some early letters and informational materials even before the quaint RAF logo showed up. Way back when John McKenna had a mustache. I sent a few dollars in to HQ. An orange shirt arrived in my mailbox with a handwritten thank you. The custom of writing handwritten notes, by the way, has continued throughout the RAF’s 22 years. More work parties, an organizational workshop, a few lengthy public lands meetings, and passionate folks started showing up in their orange shirts, all giving their time to support the preservation of backcountry aviation, and I found inspiration.
Now with the ideal aircraft for my purposes, an old 182 with the Sportsman STOL, pursuing that inspiration is up to me, my skills, and sound PIC judgment. And thanks to the RAF and its partners, there are plenty of beautiful places to go. There are disappointments when the weather or summer wildfire smoke shuts out a destination, but a constant is always the fine folks who share the mission.
The RAF has added purpose to my flying. I’ve made lifetime friends, and seen places I’d have missed if not for the RAF and its successes. It feels good to leave a place better than you found it, and know that these special places will endure for others to enjoy.
Often folks refer to the RAF mission as a cross-country flight, a journey from Point A to B. But I see it more as an orbit, since it should have no end. I see a long and productive future for the RAF. The RAF is constantly in motion, but remains close enough to Earth to recognize its beauty and preserve our special way to access it.
Carmine married and moved to Montana at age 19. The couple built a high-speed printing plant and published award-winning community newspapers. They raised four kids who have settled from Wyoming to the West Coast. Carmine served a term as a state senator after retiring from the publishing business. Carmine has written two well-received works of historical fiction.
“Like flying, it’s important to stay current as a writer. So to retain my editorial proficiency, I love my role as Publicity Liaison for the RAF,” she says, adding, “The subject matter is awesome!”
Submitted September 16, 2024.
Posted in Guest Editorial, News
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At about this time, every year, we have this conversation at the RAF about what our year end letter (code for asking for your financial support) should say to you, and about the RAF and the accomplishments of the past year.
Our many RAF supporters have such vast and varied experience, and we’re capturing some of their words of wisdom to share with you. This guest editorial is by Stef Goza, a pilot and an RAF Alaska liaison.
Bill credits aviation for much of his success in business and the ability to serve his companies and family. What began in a Champ, and a Tri-Pacer owned by five people, turned into what Bill calls, “a key business tool” in which he accumulated 9,000 hours – in a Cheyenne, a Pilatus, and a TBM, where ninety-five percent of his flying was for business. “My retirement enabled me to recall ‘Why I Learned to Fly’, a slogan from an old RAF video.” Bill’s son, Patrick, purchased the C185 they now share. “While attending a business function, some associates arrived in corporate jets. As they joined up on the tarmac, the jet pilots gathered around Patrick’s 185, and one of the passengers asked, ‘What’s special about this?’ No explanation needed for this RAF audience,” Bill says. “My involvement in the RAF is, in a partial way, repaying the rewards aviation has endowed me with. Having been involved in many worthwhile nonprofits, this is one where financial support is only part of the picture. Physically participating in great projects that have a lasting effect, with good people, returns a great personal benefit,” he says. “My only regret is that I wasn’t there at the start.” Bill and his wife Jane are privileged to be able to split time between their long-time home in eastern Nebraska and Scottsdale, Arizona. While still serving on several boards, he enjoys golf “about every third shot,” biking, cars, and reading, but always looks forward to the time he can be involved in the RAF. “It’s flying with a purpose,” he adds. Bill can be reached at bdugan@theraf.org
AR Ambassador
A Christmas gift of flight lessons from his parents started Scott Anttila’s aviation journey in 1985. “I learned at Johnson Field, a small grass strip tucked into the woods in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, and that early exposure to simple backcountry flying stuck with me,” Scott says. Growing up in the U.P., he spent a lot of time outdoors and found that flying was another way to get to the places he liked to explore—especially the ones most people never saw. As he earned more ratings and eventually moved to the Detroit area for work, Scott realized he needed a way to stay connected to northern Michigan. He bought an airplane and used it to get back to the smaller airstrips and lake country he enjoyed. Along the way, he also flew gliders out of Frankfort, soaring along the Sleeping Bear Dunes and towing sailplanes over the Great Lakes. “Those flights gave me a different appreciation for the landscape and made me even more interested in the small, out-of-the-way airports scattered around the state,” he says. Visiting those kinds of places, Scott first came across the Recreational Aviation Foundation. He started using RAF-supported airstrips both inside and outside Michigan. “I noticed how well-kept they were and how much access they opened up,” he says, adding, ”Over the years, I’ve watched a number of grass strips close, which made the RAF’s mission feel especially important to me. Maintaining these airstrips keeps aviation connected to the outdoors and makes it possible for more people to reach the quiet, remote areas that inspired me to fly in the first place.” Scott joins the other two RAF Michigan Liaisons, General Grant and Tanmoy Ganguly. He can be reached at santtila@theraf.org . Submitted December 11, 2025.
