Never let anyone tell ya that all female pilots suck, that girls can’t fly, that they have no business in a cockpit much less doing aerobatics. T’ain’t so, McGee.

That stunning krasivaya devushka is one Svetlana Kapanina, about as badass as they come regardless of gender. Biographical info:

Kapanina was born on 28 December 1968 in Shchuchinsk, Kokchetav Oblast, Kazakh Soviet Socialist Republic, Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (now Akmola Region, Republic of Kazakhstan). She dedicated herself to several sports modalities at school and always liked motorcycles and other motor vehicles. She enrolled at medical school in Tselinograd (now Astana), where she graduated in pharmaceutical sciences. She started flying at age 19, in 1988, on a Sukhoi Su-26M3, while working as a technician at the Kurgan sports aviation club of DOSAAF. By 1991 she was already an instructor pilot at DOSAAF’s Irkutsk club, and then back at Kurgan. Also in 1991, she became a member of the Russian national aerobatic team. In 1995 she graduated from Kaluga aeronautical technical school.

She lives in Moscow with her husband and two children.

Kapanina was World Aerobatic Champion in the women’s category in 1996, 1998, 2001, 2003, 2005, 2007 and 2011 and has won the title more times than any other pilot in the category. Additionally, she was overall World Air Games Champion in 1997 and 2001.

Together with Mikhail Mamistov and Oleg Spolyansky, she won the team gold medal in the 16th FAI European Aerobatic Championships 2008 in Hradec Králové (Czech Republic). She placed fourth overall and was best female participant.

Known in the aviation/aerobatics community as “the Queen of Heaven” (a fitting nick if I’ve ever heard one), Svetlana’s flying is precise, bold, and sure. Lots more videos of her throwing both piston-engine and jet aircraft all over the sky with grace and aplomb on YewToob; the above-embedded one is only an appetizer to an extremely tasty meal.

Update! All this talk about females in aviation got me to thinking about an awesome wingwalker chick I saw at the annual Warbirds air show in Monroe, the unstoppable Ashley Battles, way back in 2013. A pic I took of daredevil Ashley dismounting her trademark “Wonder Woman” 1943 Stearman right after she and her pilot—no slouch himself when it comes to airborne swashbucklery—had returned safe, sound, and fit as fiddles to good old terra firma following a flawless demonstration of the wingwalker’s art.

Had the privilege of speaking with Ashley for about ten-fifteen minutes after that photo was snapped; she was just as friendly and gracious as could be, bless her fearless heart—all smiles and cool as some cucumbers, although it was also plain to see that she was riding an adrenaline rush the likes of which the ground-bound will never know. More from America’s most trustworthy news source: the Weekly World News.

Ashley Battles holds the world record for remaining on the wings of a plane for a staggering four hours and two minutes.

She performed at high altitude two weeks after fellow airborne stuntwoman Jane Wicker died when her biplane plummeted into the ground with her on the wing.

Ashley, who has clocked up over 100 flights so far in her career, bravely stepped onto her plane in Colinville, Oklahoma this weekend.

She admits that as she only uses the simplest safety gear, she relies heavily on her physical and mental strength when performing.

She said: ‘It takes someone who is able to flip a switch in their mind to wing walk; someone who is able to not think about how high off the ground they are or how close to the ground you get or how hard it can be to move along the wing.’

Fearless Ashely is faced with speeds up to 70 knots as she performs on the wings while the plane spirals, twists, loops and barrels above screaming crowds at up to 10 air shows a year.

The young dare devil has developed a way to cope with the pressure on high altitudes – listening to music.

She added: ‘When I am standing up there that long, I’m thinking about everything from what I get to eat later to just contemplating life. I’m also listening to my iPod.

‘There’s of course the danger of possible engine failure. Hitting a bird while a wing walker is atop the wings could be a pretty terrible event.’

Yeah, I can see how that might really, really suck.

Never have been fortunate enough to take to the skies in a classic Stearman myself, but I did hitch a ride once in the next best thing: the front seat of a beautiful red Waco biplane.

In a Waco (WAH-KO, not WAY-KO, for you poor, deprived groundhogs) the pilot is the rear-seater (see photo), but both cockpits are equipped with a full complement of controls, instruments, and gauges—stick, rudder pedals, throttle, altimeter, airspeed indicator, etc—which I was sternly instructed before saddling up not to mess with or touch for any reason. I didn’t bother protesting that I’d known how to fly since age 13, was probably as familiar with the appropriate-in-flight-behavior drill as they were, and knew better than to be clowning around at 2500 feet. I figured they wouldn’t believe me, and it didn’t matter either to me or them anyway.

I climbed up and in, donned the traditional leather helmet and goggles, and off we went, into the Wild Blue Yonder. It was GREAT, lemme tell ya. Other than getting 20 minutes of stick time in a Douglas A-1D Skyraider, the Waco flight was by far the most fun I’ve ever had in the air.

Wingwalkers, of course, have been around since the pioneering days of powered flight, many if not most of them women, including the legendary Gladys Roy, Lillian Boyer, and Gladys Ingle, to all of which brave, daring souls I humbly doff my cap. Much as I’ve always loved me some flying, ain’t no way in the world you’d ever coax me out of that comfy, safe cockpit to go cavorting about on the wings, fuselage, landing gear, or anyplace else. Not on your life, bub. As with skydiving, I see no reason to be jumping out of a perfectly good airplane, nor standing on the wing of one neither. It would have to be on fire at the very minimum, and even then I’d need some time to think it over.

I also have a short video of Ashley and her aerial chaffeur doing a high-speed (for a Stearman) pass low over the runway, climbing to slightly higher altitude, then executing a heart-stopping barrel roll with Ms Battles insouciantly leaning back against the frame atop the biplane’s wing visible in the above pic—Smoke On for dramatic effect the whole while. Tried hand-coding an embed of it, but unfortunately couldn’t get the blasted thing to work.