Engineering student Julie Chapman lives by formulas, but longs for the freedom of the skies. Writer Marjorie Clark rode shotgun to learn about Chapman outside the lab.

In 2011, she left a job working as a nuclear engineer and is now looking for jobs in aerospace to marry her two passions: engineering and aviation.
Chapman holds a sport pilot license and takes every opportunity of good weather to get 8,000 feet above sea level and leave all her stress on the ground. In the sky is where she finds serenity and peace.
She completed her pilot training and received her license in October 2012 and has since flown 84 hours as the primary pilot and an additional 56 hours as the pilot with her instructor riding shotgun. She spends between 20 and 25 hours per month above the clouds.
“I think about flying all the time,” she says with a laugh. “I always would rather be in my plane than anywhere else. Sometimes I even skip class to go.”
She calls herself “obnoxiously enthusiastic,” saying she can talk for hours about everything related to aviation, including the weather.
“Flying weather reports are very different than what you get on TV,” she says. “You have to be able to read the weather and the clouds. Clouds are nature’s way of telling you what’s going on.”
Some clouds indicate dangerous weather, and others tell the story of cool, calm air above it all. She says winter is the best time to fly since summer brings warm updrafts of air that cause turbulence.
The juxtaposition of engineering and aviation is an interesting one, since engineering requires process-oriented tests and plenty of checklists. Aviation has its own set of checklists for safety and preflight procedures, but the act of flying is done by feel and sight.
“As an engineer, I wanted to do everything by the numbers, but in flying you don’t,” she says. “Once I learned that I needed to do flying — especially landing — visually, then I got better at it. Once you learn how to do a good landing you’re just like, ‘I’m awesome.’
Based at West Desert Airpark, Julie rents hangar space for Blue Sil, her experimental light sport airplane. Weighing in at just 700 pounds with a 1320-pound maximum takeoff weight, the plane is lightweight and sleek in design. Complete with the most updated GPS, radio and radar, Chapman takes to the skies almost every weekend. During Spring Break she took the five-hour flight to Carson City, Nev., with her cats in tow to see family and receive additional flight training and certification.
Chapman completed her first master’s degree in nuclear engineering at Idaho State University, and she is now at the U finishing up her second master’s degree in materials science engineering — all while studying to become a flight instructor. Eventually she will become an air flight instructor, but not until she has more flying hours under her belt.
Sport pilots are held to different restrictions by the Federal Aviation Administration, such as not being able to fly above 10,000 feet above sea level or 2,000 feet above the ground — whichever is higher — a restriction from flying at night, and a weight restriction. But Chapman prefers sport flying because she can feel everything affecting the plane.
“The best analogy is a mountain bike versus a car,” she says. “On a bike you can feel everything — the bumps, the air — and it requires more attention. A car is much more protected and automated, so you don’t experience as much. Mountain bikes also make you more tired.”
She says flying while fatigued is different than driving while fatigued because the sky doesn’t have rumble strips along the lane to let you know when you are off course or headed for danger.
Always honest with herself and her abilities, she hit some bad weather on the way back to Cedar Valley from Carson City and chose to take the necessary percautions. She landed twice, in Elko and Wells, Nev., because of turbulence, which isn’t dangerous but requires a lot of concentration and can make the pilot tired very quickly, she says. While on the ground she connected with the airport owners and other pilots.
“Aviation, it’s a very tight knit community no matter where you land,” she says. “Even if you don’t know anybody, they open their arms to you and are concerned about your safety.”
Alina Davis, co-owner of West Desert Airpark and a pilot herself, says Chapman is smart and is not one to take chances with her or others’ safety.
“She knows what she’s doing, she’s committed to studying and learning and keeping other people safe,” she says.
When Chapman first started taking flying lessons she was afraid of it because it was so different from being in a commercial plane. Everything has a consequence and can be unnerving for the uninitiated, she says.
With the goal of becoming a flight instructor, Chapman is working on accruing as many flight hours as possible and is active in her flight community.
“My daughters love aviation and they look up to her,” Davis says. “[They] talk to her about different things, so it’s nice to have her as a role model as well. We very much enjoy her. She’s very good and very excited and adds a lot to our community.”