In 1976 Silvia Wagner, a young chemist, was very interested in general aviation. Her first skydive was followed by another 600 with quite some athletic success. She won a 4th place at the Austrian championship in Relative-Work, as best woman in the general rating and she is still holding the record for the biggest formation. For ten yaers now she has been an Instructor for skydivers.

As a natural consequence, she started to fly aeroplanes and was very eager to carry on with her training. The final result was the ATPL.Now she is organising international meetings for skydivers and also flying the "Pink Skyvan", a twin-turboprop aeroplane all over Europe.In 1985 she discovered balloon flying as a new hobby. Right from the beginning she was again very ambitious, and has meanwhile reached an experience-level, that some of her male collegues needed years to achieve. She has also taken the examination for the ballooning-instructor and is now the first female instructor in Austria.

Together with her partner Thomas Lewetz they have joined several Gasballoon-Races:

Gordon Bennet 1990 from Lech am Arlberg/A to Foppolo/Italien 9. rank

Gordon Bennet 1991 from Lech am Arlberg/A to Brünn/CSFR 4. rank

Gordon Bennet 1992 from Stuttgart/ to Krakau/Polen 7. rank

World Championship 1992 Obertraun/Sbg 2 races in Austria 5. rank Gordon Bennet 1993 from Albuquerque/USA to North Platte/Nebraska 4. rank

World championship 1994 Albuquerque 2. rank

http://ecf.hq.eso.org/~ralbrech/para/pink.html

©Copyright 1996 by Jan Meyer.