Flying High in the Karoo

Our first guest writer is Jannie Black, an aviation veteran of the Karoo and a gyrocopter pioneer. He shares some memory snapshots of flying over the Heartland.

By Jannie Black

Carnarvon Flying Club

In the Fifties my dad, Blackie van der Westhuyzen and friends started a flying club outside the Karoo village of Carnarvon.

Their first plane was a Piper Cub trainer.

On September 26, 1958, I did two hours on a Cub at Youngsfield – but I failed my first medical because of a 60-degree squint!

I tried again in March the following year up in Bloemfontein on a Piper Cub - but failed the Medical again because of being cross-eyed. A third attempt – this time in Port Elizabeth – brought the same sad result. Civil Aviation did not like my cross-eyes.

Guardian Angels

In June that year Koos Jooste - our Dry Cleaner – and I drove to Uitenhage in my TR3 and bought a 1946 model 80 Hp Ercoupe ZS-BRI from Tokkie Ferreira for 750  Pounds.

Koos refused to drive the Triumph back to Carnarvon and insisted on flying with me in our Ercoupe.

So, with about seven hours’ instruction I flew my first ‘solo’ flight to Carnarvon with my partner as a passenger.

Our guardian angels flew with us that winter afternoon and after nearly landing on the Loxton road, at Bastersfontein because of carburettor icing, we made it safely to Carnarvon airport, after sunset in the rain. Needless to say we kissed the ground after landing safely.

I went to Cape Town for an operation to reduce my squint to less than 5 degrees and so passed the flying medical. Happy days!

For many years we flew across the Great Karoo on all sorts of adventures. In March 1961 we had tremendous floods and all the roads were washed away. We dropped supplies to people stranded on farms all over the district.

Gyrocopters

My mate David Torr and I bought a minicopter kit from the USA in the early 1960s. We used the flat pans of Van Wyk’s Vlei and Verneukpan (where Malcolm Campbell once tried to set a land-speed record in his Bluebird) for training in the brand-new gyrocopter.

After we put the kit together, we would tow it behind a bakkie and so learnt how it ascended and descended. Once it was going, we would unhook it from the bakkie.

We’d run up, fly and land. One day I had a nice bit of altitude and I thought I’d do a circuit. But I lost altitude fast, and one of the rotors hit the ground. Luckily I had my bone dome (helmet) on.

As I landed, I was lights out. When I opened my eyes, there was dust all around, and I didn’t know what was happening. So I shot up, through the dust, and waved at the guys so they’d know I was all right.

Later on they told me that it seemed I had hardly crashed when I popped out of the dust and waved at them. I must have only been out for a few seconds…

Photographs by Chris Marais