The contents of a logbook
I headed up to Kempsey on the weekend with my family to visit my Grandfather who has had a rough time lately following a fall, although fortunately he was doing pretty well when we visited. He is now in nursing care and a shadow of his former self, but still lucid and with his cheeky streak still in reserve.
He was where I got my flying passion from - he took my for my first flight at 10 and as a kid I could always talk planes with him, and he always had a lesson or something new to teach me. I was in awe of all these aero club trophies he had from various spot landing comps etc.
With things the way they are part of why we were up there was to sort through some of his things. Years ago he gave me his old correspondence flying school notes, recently his old DC headset and I am now looking after his flying bag and some of his related kit. I took a flick through his log book - about 650 hours in total, and it was amazing to me what you can pick out from that.
First TIF flight in a tiger moth in 1947, first solo in 6.5 hours. A bit of a break after that (having 6 kids does that) and resumption of the odd flight in the 60s, some more training and completion of his PPL in 1973. We found flights he took my parents on to take them to a wedding, lots of shark patrols around south west rocks, flying comps, aero club activities and even the flight the first time he took me up, with my name as his co pilot.
Maybe not a lot by some standards, but for a man who worked hard his whole life, raised his kids right and got in whatever flying he could it was meaningful to me, and interesting how much you can read from a collection of acronyms and numbers.
Just wanted to share.