Australian Flying — November-December 2017

his attention while attempting

to ignite it.

Perhaps it is fortunate that

he saw through my ploy. These

heaters, although sometimes

effective in skilled hands, can fill

the cockpit with more smoke than

heat if the light-up procedure is

attempted by an inept operator –

me, for example.

"Vot ze bloody hell are you

doing viz zat sing?" he enquired.

"Are you trying to kill us again?"

Leaning over to my side to

switch off the offending heater,

he neatly inverted us into the

cloud tops.

I have to admit that I don’t

remember how we eventually

emerged safely – but emerge

we did. And having got it shiny

side up, and pretty much under

control, Piet initiated a now

familiar monologue which

touched on my education, the

Neanderthals from whom I was

descended, the size of my brain,

which he compared unfavourably

with that of a cockroach, and my

future prospects at Placo should I

ever again touch anything without

first consulting him.

Fire

Actually, N7339Y was this very

same aeroplane that had been

ferried from the USA only a

few weeks earlier by the famous

long-distance record-setter, Max

Conrad.

It was the first Twin Comanche

in the country and, as the Piper

distributors for southern Africa,

we were naturally excited about its

arrival. We were clustered around

Wonderboom’s box-on-bricks

control tower. Zingi, bow-tie

spruced up, pacing around puffing

on a stream of Lexingtons, kept

demanding that the brow-beaten

ATC, Schalk Barnard, try to

contact the aircraft every couple

of minutes.

Eventually, as we stared at the

evening sky to the north-west,

we all spotted it pretty much

simultaneously. But there was

something very wrong – the

aircraft was streaming a smudge of

black smoke behind it.

Zingi, quick as a f lash, dived

into the tower, grabbed the mike

and shouted, “November 7339

Yankee, you are on fire!”.

After a moment’s silence we

hear a very bored accent drawling,

“I yam naat on fiya.”

Zingi: “39 Yankee, I say again

you are on fire. You are trailing

black smoke.”

Max Conrad, now sounding

seriously pissed off, said, “And I say

again, I yam NAAAAT on fiya.”

The poor man, then well into

his 70s, had f lown all the way

down Africa with everyone telling

him he was on fire. Of course the

trouble had been the misbehaving

Janitrol heater. The very one that

I was playing with at 19,000 feet.

Actually, I had another

nonsense with Zingi and a fire.

We had landed a 235, ZS-

DUE, on the golf course in

front of the Leisure Isle Hotel

at Knysna. When I say “We...”

I mean Zingi landed. He didn’t

trust me to do anything more

exciting than hold straight and

level, while cruising.

We stayed the night at

Pat McClure’s excellent

establishment. Zingi was on top

form in the pub, entertaining the

locals as only Zingi could, with

story after story mostly about

how he had done something

stupid in an aeroplane. He had

the stage presence to carry it off,

to the extent that his status was

enhanced rather than diminished

by each new story.

The stories got better as

the night wore on, and Zingi’s

delivery was improved with each

Castle Lager he put away.

Naturally, when it was time

to head for East London in the

morning, Zingi was little more

...by the time Hendrik stepped

off the back of the wing,

the Tiger was at about 15 feet.

(^50) Lessons from a logbook
AUSTRALIAN FLYING November – December 2017
No Piet, it's not on fire...