He was friendly and sociable. Those of you who've been around long enough will easily guess who I'm talking about.
My first encounter with him was in December 1994. He met me on the apron at JKIA and kindly offered to take a photo of me with my captain in front of our US registered Lear 35A which was on UN contract. Later when he saw me again, he gave me the photo. Nice guy, because thats the only photo I have to remember that amazing experience of flying a small jet. (now where did that photo go?...)
Fast forward to circa 1998... while I was working for Boskovic, we had a UN contract to fly a C208 to Dadaab and Kakuma five days a week. Then some clever folk in the UN decided that they wanted to have two pilots flying them, even though that meant giving up one passenger seat. So the management hired freelance pilots in order to fulfill the requirement economically. I flew with a small variety of young pilots, and then I was assigned to fly with my old friend.
This particular day had fairly good weather for the 7.30am departure. It had rained the night before and the apron was covered with the remains of flying termites. This attracted a large number of birds and they were feasting in small groups all over the taxiways and runways. We started up and taxied the aircraft to customs. While crossing runway 14 my copilot suggested that we turn on the landing lights. I thought this was a strange request and queried him. He said it would help scare the birds. Ahhh... yes, now I saw where the logic came from. Its a commonly held belief that flying with landing lights on will help bird avoidance, but I fail to see its usefulness while taxiing around slowly. I therefore politely refused his request.
We got airborne and joined the north east access lane. There was some broken clouds at about 7 or 8 thousand feet but you could see nice blue skies above. Shortly after takeoff I noticed that the weather radar was switched on. I know that these can be rather fragile devices so I never switch them on until I have a suspicion of bad weather ahead. Today there was absolutely no suspicions. I asked him if he had switched it on (in case I hadn't noticed it was on when we started up). He said he did. I asked him why and he replied that it was in case there was any rain ahead. I told him that in my opinion there was no chance of any weather. I switched it off. While climbing over Masinga Dam I noticed that the radar was on again! I switched it off again and angrily told him 'Just don't touch anything!'.
In the cruise he asked to see the pilots operating handbook. I let him amuse himself with that. After a while he started to interrogate me about something utterly pointless regarding an anti icing system which wasn't even installed. The rest of the day followed this pattern of reading something in the manual followed by useless discussions. This was going to be a long day. Now I know why my chief pilot insisted that todays copilot wasn't to be allowed to touch anything except to talk on the radio.
While discussing these matters with another pilot friend, he told me story about flying with this character in the King Air. While enjoying the cruise at FL250, the airplane suddenly jolted and pitched. His copilot had just extended the flaps to the approach position. When asked why he did it, he replied that he wanted to see if they would work at high altitude but still within the indicated speed limit. Can't blame a guy for being curious!
Those of you who have enjoyed his company in flight (or on the ground) will probably have some other very interesting stories to tell!
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