New guy here
Hi everyone, just found this group, thought you might like an old story, and maybe someone here could confirm, as a lot of people don't believe me!
Scene is Moresby briefing room on 19/8/67, Hagan Show day. Group of disgruntled pilots as there is that rare 100 ft. of fog over the strip. The tower controller comes down for a coffee, and gets some flack along the lines of " We gotta get to Hagen, when can we go?" What we didn't know was that he had already resigned & was off back to Canada.....
"You really want to go, get in your planes". No-one was going to back down, but we didn't really believe it. He cleared about 15 a/c off with maybe 50 yds RVR. But he did it sensibly, T/O towards the sea, clear T/O, report passing the tower on course. The tower was sticking out of the fog, next one clear after passing it.
The other memory is the switch to HF, Moresby came back "Morning (callsign), time....., QNH...., traffic is - long pause - bugger it, there's about 6 in front of you and 8 behind, they're all going to Hagan, and they're spread out from 8000 to 12000".
And I got a nice photo of a Patair Dc3 as we overtook him, I wasn't game to get too close so I can't read the rego on the photo.
Anyone with a long enough memory?