Welcome aboard the warship Proone Mr Piper. Good to have an historian with your depth of knowledge and experience. Any 'scoop' you have to share will not go amiss.
Aeropelican was bought from Keith by Jack Masling who onsold it for a tidy profit after a very short time to an unspeakable Hungarian who used to throw his somewhat offensive weight around. Six mill was a figure bandied about at the time. (TMB should have some recall of those events. )
My intro to Maslings and 'Happy Jack' was in January 1967. Flew Canberra to Coonamble in the C320 VH-FJW with Jack and the late Tom (Fatcat) Long, the company's chief pilot. We went via Pelican so that Jack and Tom could discuss with Keith a proposal for Maslings to put their C402s on the Sydney run, under the Reg 203 scheduled service provisions that had not long been promulgated.
(Thinks .. that Hungarian . . .. what he threateningly said at a meeting to one A. FitzSimons when 'discussing' industrial' matters has gone down in vernacular history as carried in the heads of a few old foggies. One who was there later did a fair impersonation of the encounter down the Brickmakers Arms .. . . laugh? . .. bloody near died.)
Last edited by Fantome; 17th Jun 2012 at 04:37.