HELICOPTER OPS: GEORGE TONKING
AN OPEN DOOR
TO HELP
As competitive as the aviation industry in South Africa may be at times, when your chips are down, you find that there is a community of like-minded people to support you. I thought it fit to share such a story to kick off the new year, to encourage us in the fact that we all potentially form part of that kinship. Here’s Jaacie Visagie’s story: THURSDAY MORNING. November. A quiet security shift around the south west of Johannesburg. Overcast and gloomy, with a couple of bright spots in the clouds. Typical Highveld summer weather. Me in a red Robinson Raven II. Plenty of fuel in the tank. And no one else in sight. Halfway through my sortie, there is a weather change: the cloud base is descending and the wind speed increasing. Time to head for home… no point playing chicken with a storm front and the Suikerbosrand ridges.
February 2022
“My door is open and I’m not sure of my position.”
the radio bur s t into life with a ner vous female voice
Normally I would have a babble of voices in my head, courtesy of southern sector radio frequency 125.6. But not that Thursday morning. Midway along my planned route light raindrops began cascading down the Robbie’s bubble.
22
And then the radio burst into life: a nervous, abrupt female voice.
With no one else on-air, I answered immediately, asking who she was, what she was flying and, more importantly, where she thought she was.
The voice belonged to Hanli Claasen, a private pilot flying a red and white Sling TSi, which she and her husband had owned since February 2021. Hanli comes from Petrus Steyn in the Free State and has been flying since 1993 – first open microlights, before moving on to a Storch in 2005 – a warmer option in the cold eastern Free State winters. Flying courses through her family’s veins – with
