People around Jim Davis suddenly started killing
themselves, and it had quite a profound effect. It
made him realise that he would have to keep his
inger out to avoid joining the rush.52
t this stage, my
logbook has a
photo of a leggy
young lady, who
Zingi rather
unnecessarily
described
as having
considerable frontal talent and a
somewhat minimalist approach to
clothing, reclining on the wing of a
Cherokee. In fact I remember the
occasion well. The aircraft, ZS-
DVC had spent some days in Obie’s
workshop having a glass panel put
in the f loor. That was long before
we put glass on the panel.
The owner, an excitable and
demanding Pole named Max
Kolb, had wanted this done so
that his new aeroplane would be
suitable for aerial photography.
He was, in fact, a hugely respected
fashion photographer from
Durban. I am not really sure how
the glass f loor would benefit his
career, but who am I to question
such things? I remember him
having fits of artistic temperament
that even intimidated Zingi.
“Max is coming at 10 o’clock to
collect his aeroplane, so you just
stay out of sight. I don’t want you
stuffing up the deal.”
Anyhow, he collected his
aeroplane without any temper
tantrums and set sail for Durban.
We never heard from him again;
however, we did hear about him.
It seems that, about a year later,Jerry Stegi, our Piper dealer and
maintenance guy in Durban, got an
excited call from a lady, perhaps the
one in the picture, saying that she
had had a row with Max and he was
on his way out to Virginia Airfield
to kill himself in the aeroplane. She
wanted Jerry to disable the aircraft
to prevent this disaster.
Now, this put Jerry in a hell of a
difficult position. Not only did he
hangar Max’s aircraft, he also did
all the maintenance. It was hardly
his place to render his customer’s
aircraft unserviceable on the say-
so of a hysterical female. However
he also realized the implications of
ignoring the request.
Eventually Jerry compromised:
he let the air out of one of the
main oleos. No pilot in his right
mind could fail to notice this, so
he would naturally come to Jerry
and ask for it to be fixed. Then
Jerry could take his time and hope
his customer calmed down.
Well this was not to be. Max
dragged his lopsided aircraft out of
the hangar, leapt aboard and was
soon taxying out for a "local f light".
He got airborne and turned
straight out to sea. Durban picked
him up on radar and enquired
about his intentions. They got
more than they had bargained
for. He told them of his tangled
love life and how he was going to
commit his earthly being to the
depths of the Indian Ocean. After
a while he was out of VHF range,but thoughtfully continued on HF.
After about two and a half hours
of this (the aeroplane had around
five hours endurance) Max asked
ATC to say goodbye to the world
and particularly to his mother and
his girlfriend. After which nothing
more was heard of him.
Very sad, you might say,
however the story doesn’t end
there. About a year later a fishing
trawler operating a couple of miles
off the coast, and some distance
north of Durban, snagged
something in it’s net. After much
heaving and struggling, up came
Max’s Cheroke, pretty much
intact. It certainly hadn’t been
dived into the sea.
As far as I remember there was
no body in it. It would seem that
Max chickened out, got below the
radar and sneaked back, runningout of fuel just before reaching
the coast.
Conspiracy theorists speculated
about the possibility of his going
to make a new life for himself
in Mozambique. Possible, but I
think unlikely.Jack Jay
Because other people’s f lights
obviously don’t feature in my
logbooks, it is difficult to put exact
dates to them, however it was
about this time–mid 1964–that
Jack Jay, the guy who nearly spun
us into the ground during his
Apache conversion with Bomb-
doors, did himself in, in Angola.
We had sold a 235 Cherokee
to a mining company whose head
office was in Luanda. Jack f lew the
aircraft up there and was met byLearning from the Lost
AUSTRALIAN FLYING July – August 2018JIM DAVIS
logbookLessons from a
Jim Davis has a passion for instructing. He has been
training civil and military pilots, in the air and on
the ground for 50 years. His other passion is writing,
which he studied at Curtin University in Perth. You
can see, and buy, his two pilot text books PPL and
Flight Tests at http://www.jimdavis.com.auSTEVE HITCHEN