Aviation for Women - September/October 2010

FollowingOppOrtunity
her freshman year, which
meant she did not play in
the hockey games, even
though she was on the
team. “After that I decid-
ed, I’m not going to have
hockey as a career, so maybe I should focus
my attention on something more important
in life,” she says, laughing.
Unsure of what she wanted to do, she be-
came a communications major because it’s a
skill essential to all professions. One semes-
ter shy of graduation, “I took some time off
to re-evaluate what I really wanted to do in
life.” Her dad, Lou, whose day job is repair-
ing and maintaining food processing ma-
chines, was building an RV- 4, and Raddatz
hung out in the garage, helping with miscel-
laneous tasks, as she sorted out her future.
Remembering the years the family camped
at EAA AirVenture, which she remembers as
happy, overwhelming and emotional expe-
riences, Raddatz realized she had a natural
curiosity about aviation, and “if you want
to know more about something, what bet-
ter way than to get in there and see how it
all works.”
By this time the family had moved to Hor-
tonville, Wisconsin, just 25 miles north of
Fox Valley Tech’s aviation campus on the
east side of Oshkosh’s Wittman Regional Air-
port. Raddatz started in the two-year A&P
program because it was her primary inter-
est, but in her second year she decided to re-
turn for a third to earn her avionics certifica-
tion. Everything in aviation is going digital,
she says, so now is the time to “get yourself
in there.” Introduced to basic avionics in her
first year (see sidebar: Fox Valley Techs’ Inte-
grated Curriculum), she wanted more train-
ing “so I’d feel more comfortable…feel like I
know what I’m doing.”

Internship Opportunities

Between her first and second year at Fox Val-
ley Tech, Raddatz scored an internship at the
Gulfstream facility, just up the road in Apple-
ton. She worked the line—“You have to start
somewhere”—but had opportunities to help
in other departments. “Their avionics shop is
really nice; they have a lot of neat set ups!”
And she has an application on file there,
waiting for the economy to improve.
Between her second and third year she
landed an internship at EAA, working in the
predecessor of the Learn to Fly Discovery
Center, and later with EAA SportAir Work-
shops, which teach aircraft building skills.
Internships only last so long, she says, but
EAA had an opening at its Air Academy
Lodge, and being the cook there kept her in-
volved and led her to turning a wrench on
Aluminum Overcast, EAA’s B- 17.
Connecting the
waypoints of her
life, it is clear that
Raddatz does not
fear change or
worry about social
convention.
Needing some temporary help, EAA’s
maintenance director asked the new A&P if
she’d be interested. “Yeah!” Raddatz said.
She then asked if he was looking for any-
one else. He was, and so her then-classmate
and boyfriend, Austin Raddatz, joined her at
EAA’s Weeks Hangar. Redoing some engine
baffles in the Cessna 210 photo airplane, “I
learned I was pretty good at sheet metal,”
Raddatz says. And pulling a wing off the
Ford Tri-Motor and working on its corrugat-
ed skin “was interesting.”
And then the B- 17 returned from its tour
as an interactive flying museum. Raddatz
learned about radial engines in school, but
her instructors said she and
her classmates would proba-
bly never work on one. “Aus-
tin and I used to chuckle about
this a lot.” Filthy from work-
ing on the bomber’s Wright
R-1820 radials—pulling and
cleaning sumps and filters,
pulling cylinders, working ig-
nition lead issues, replacing
cork gaskets—they’d look at
each other and say, “Yeah, this
is something we’d never work
on, right. To start my career
on the Ford and B- 17 was pret-
ty amazing!”
Later, during her last year
in school, with instructor

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