Page 210 - Demo

206the town once a year and competed in various sports for a cup. A much more popular arrangement. We were all accommodated in 3 bedded huts in the National Park and the townsfolk put on big BBQs to feed us.To justify flying there we all did a low level navigation teach to get there. Some wives also came along in a Dakota. The SF260 had a third seat in the back between the pilots and our groundcrew came on that.The low level route went up to the Zambesi and then flew along the gorge. Great fun for us but probably not so for the groundcrew sitting in the back who did not have a parachute. The fuel gauges on the aircraft were unreliable. You always checked that the tip tanks were full visually on the walk round and that should give you a good hour of flying. There was a fuel selector switch in the front cockpit and you switched from the tips to the main tanks when the tips indicated empty or when the engine spluttered. No problem at height but whizzing along the gorge at low level a bit more alarming. One crew said they were chatting to each other when the engine started missing. It was the engineer in the back who reached over and selected the main tanks. Later on the course, during some high energy sorties we landed with very little fuel but there was no real way of knowing how much. Victoria Falls was amazing even though the river was not in full flood. You could hear the roar of the water from some distance away. I was put down to play cricket but was out second ball and was then sent to play bowls instead. The next day was football but I cannot remember that at all. It was very hot and at 3000 ft hard work. We had to fly back on Sunday afternoon, but my aircraft would not start. After much fiddling about I got on the Dakota, complete with my parachute. I think the old runway was about 10,000ft long but even so, the Dakota pilot swung its tail off the end of the runway to get the longest run for takeoff. And it used most of the runway to do that. There were several wives who had seats, but I just sat on the floor near the back and rested myself against my parachute. The crew said that when they got back to