TAMMY Camilleri has joined an exclusive club, but it wasn't easy.
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The Bathurst commercial pilot, flight instructor and businesswoman has become the only woman in Australia - and only the fifth in the world - to gain a certification to fly jets in America in what is known as air racing.
And it's not a sport that's for the faint-hearted.
"We know that, when we shut the canopy, it could be the last time you come back to your family," Mrs Camilleri said of air racing's participants.
"It's all about respecting what you're doing, respecting the aircraft that you're flying, understanding your limitations as a pilot, but also the limitations of the aircraft."
Mrs Camilleri - who with her husband Charlie operates Fastjet Adventure (which takes people up for the fighter jet experience), a flight school and charter company Panorama Airways at Bathurst Airport - has been travelling to Reno, Nevada in the US for about a decade as Mr Camilleri competes in the air races there.
"They fly a track which is eight miles in circumference, an oval shaped track, and you have up to eight aircraft all flying around the track, all similar speeds, all trying to overtake each other," she said of the sport.
"You are between 50 feet and 250 feet off the ground and you're going full power."
The air racing features a number of classes; of those, Mr Camilleri competes in the jet class.
Within that class, there are only 35 to 40 people in the world that are qualified to fly jets in the air races, Mrs Camilleri said, and among those people, there are only three women who are currently qualified.
Becoming one of those three women with the qualifications, she said, was a "pretty intense" experience.
Mrs Camilleri trained in an L-29 jet that the couple have in Bathurst (they also have one in the US, which Mr Camilleri flies when racing).
"That involved finding an instructor in the country, which was very difficult, because there's only one L-29 in the whole country and it's here," she said.
"The instructor came from Sydney."
With that completed, Mrs Camilleri was in Reno two weeks later to start a process that included four days of "intensive formation flying"; the rookie school, known as the Pylon Racing Seminar (air racing courses are marked out by pylons) or PRS; and then "the training for the actual racing, which was very, very intense".
Not only are there g-forces to handle, but she said "you're also trying to have eyes in the back of your head as well as fly the plane and look out for everybody else".
"Once they went through all that training, I did about a week of that, and then they sat me down and went through it all and said that I had passed, which was amazing," Mrs Camilleri said.
"I did not really expect to get through first time because not everybody does and because it's such a unique type of skillset that they can't really do anywhere else in the world but in Reno, it's very hard to go and practise it."
With the qualification under her belt, Mrs Camilleri plans to compete at Reno this September as a team before flying solo in the future.
"I didn't realise, until we were told only recently, that we're the first husband and wife flying jet team for the air races," she said.
"So it's sort of like fighting over who's getting the front seat.
"We only have one aircraft [jet for the air races] at the moment. We're just in the process of getting another aircraft."
As to why she wanted to qualify to race the jets, Mrs Camilleri said her motivation was twofold.
"For me, as a pilot, aviation is always about constant improvement," she said.
"And I felt that it was going to be an opportunity to improve my skills.
"And because I'm a flying instructor as well, it also gave me an opportunity to enhance my instructor rating skills, because I can now train people on these jets.
"I'm not sure where you go from here because that was probably the top of the elite sort of thing that I could do at this point in my career.
"But I think being able to pass that on to other people is a great thing as well."
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