Dodging Diamonds and Disasters
A pilot’s logbook is far more that just a record of dates, times, places and flights; it is also a history of a pilot’s flying career and a chronicle of the lessons learnt that makes them the aviator they are today. Jim Davis takes a look back through his own logbooks, and records the incidents that have shaped his approach to flying.
June 1964 was a whirl of activity. I had one day to settle my family into our new home in Kimberley, and the next I was off to Port Elizabeth.
Bert Potgieter, who was my new boss, was a spherical and cheerful little man. A tailor would describe as “portly-short”. He owned the General Motors dealership for that semi-desert hinterland known as the Northern Cape.
My first duty was to fly three drivers to Port Elizabeth, some 540 miles away, so they could collect new cars from the from the GM factory and drive them back to Kimberley A problem arose almost immediately. One of my
passengers looked at our shiny new Cherokee 235, and declared he was not going to go in it. No amount of coaxing, reassuring or threatening would change his mind. He knew for certain that the aeroplane was going to crash and kill us all. Eventually a substitute driver was found and we set sail for the coast.
All went well. My pax, after some initial comments of “Au! It’s too fast,” and, “Why so many clocks?”, eventually settled down chattering and laughing amongst themselves.
