HELICOPTER OPS: GEORGE TONKING
When I first signed up to be a pilot, I dreamed of flying to exotic place where I might alight in jungle clearings or land on deserted, silvery shores. HOWEVER REALITY SOON KICKED IN, and I found myself shuttling clients to work, tracking stolen vehicles and chasing crooks in the concrete jungle that is Gauteng. Every so often though, I do force adventure to find me. Like recently, when my dad mentioned how sad he was that he couldn’t jet off on his annual pilgrimage to the coastal town of St. Ives, in Cornwall, England, because of Covid-19 travel restrictions. I immediately started scheming.
but it would have been a slow, much more expensive jaunt compared to a plank ride. Fortunately, I had a Cessna P210 available to get us to Mazeppa Bay, from where an Eastern Cape local’s Robinson R44 would ferry them across to their end destination. It didn’t take much to persuade a good friend, Jacques Mouton, to co-pilot the 210 on our little escapade. He has flown everything from the Cessna 150 to the Gripen, so was the perfect pilot for the slippery 210.
Ma z e p p a ’ s 5 0 0 -o d d m e t r e -l o n g r u nw a y w a s inte r es ting
Second to St. Ives, his favourite place is a small fishing spot on the Wild Coast called Kob Inn, a quaint resort that caters to ‘real’ fishermen. By road, it would be at least an arduous two-day journey from the Lowveld for the old man, who is approaching 85 in the shade.
“Why don’t I fly you, dad?” I suggested, with images of a beach landing firmly in mind. He loved the idea. I initially planned to chopper him all the way down,
22
July 2021
Part of the plan involved surprising my dad with a companion for his twoweek-long fishing holiday, my nephew, Colbyn. The flight down from Grand Central (via White River where we picked up my dad) was uneventful, barring some weather avoidance typical of late summer operations. Fortunately, the pressurisation on the P210 allowed us to avoid most of it comfortably at level two-zero. The landing on Mazeppa’s 500-odd-metre-long hill-crested runway
