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Air racer, movie double, resort owner, legendary Pancho has done everything.

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Long-time pilot Pancho Barnes is the granddaughter of the Union Army's chief aeronaut. She has participated on most of the era's big aviation events, but found time for jaunts such as an excursion to Mexico, masquerading as a man.
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visitors came out to be amused. Young Florence and her Travelair helped the entertainment committee by flying parachute jumpers. She flew a jumper named Slim Zanmuller, a big guy with an exhibition 'chute, and passed the hats between jumps. Sometimes Slim fast-talked-spectators, especially beautiful young ladies, into making their first parachute jumps. Many times, Florence Lowe Barnes skidded her Travelair around sideways while the jumper encouraged neophites with a strong shove.
  During the heyday of prohibition she flew to Ensenada,Mexico, to do weekend exhibitions and hop passengers at $10 a head among the wealthy rum runners who had no place to spend their tax-free profits.
   On the day she received her official private license, she led a flight of 65 planes to dedicate the Grand Central Airport in Glendale.Her passenger was Buron Fitts, then District Attorney of Los Angeles County. Just before take-off, a phone call asked , in typical Bogart style,"How much would you take to dump Fitts out?"
  With the sudden rise of box office receipts from air movies, Pancho became technical director for "The Flying Fool," a Pathe film that was made at the same time Howard Hughes was shooting "Hell's Angels." She convinced her studio that it would be more profitable to pay her three pilots $100 per day for guaranteed work rather than $10 per head and re-shoot most of the scenes. Her pilots, Frank clarke, Roy Wilson and Leo Nomis, have all made that final crash but they formed the beginning of the first pilot's labor union, the Motion Picture Pilot's Association, almost a year before the Airplane Pilot's Association was founded. Pancho is a past president and the only woman member of the group.
Much of the legend of Pancho Barnes dates to the first "Powder Puff" derbies of that high-flying era. During the 1929 transcontinental race she was flying her speed-wing Travelair. The engine cowling was big and the visibility on landings was lousy. At Pecos, Texas, she turned on her final approach (Continued on page 58)