Flying with Maverick in African skies

Where to begin with CC Pocock? His name I guess. CC stands for Captain Chaos, a nom de guerre he relishes. Call Central Casting (Top Gun division).Tell them you're shooting an action movie in the African bush. "I want an ace pilot with a bit of an edge: Maverick with a touch of the Crocodile Dundees. I want daredevil pyrotechnic stunts; a pilot who chases hijacked cars down highways six feet above the tarmac in a Cessna 172 and can fly in and out of narrow canyons with his eyes shut. He must be a fully paid up member of the awkard squad. And he must be able to cook”. They'll probably send for CC.

CC playing to the crowds

But of course it's not that simple. Beneath that occasionally volcanic, unreconstructed hippy, shoot-first-ask-questions-later exterior lies a more complex character. He can be patient, deeply serious, responsible, meticulous, passionate, articulate, driven, occasionally stroppy, flies like a raptor, and...yes he can cook. In a kikoi. So not that scary. More Tigger than tiger. Some clown once said “Those who can, do. Those who can't, teach.” CC can do both. Consumately.

I spent 3 days with CC flying out of his private, airstrip near Barberton, South Africa from where he runs Advanced Bush and Mountain Flying courses. We did things in his reinforced Cessna 172C with big wheels and a go faster logo which few, if any, well-brought up British instructors would contemplate. Crazy stuff they'd say. I beg to differ.

The Barberton valley, in what used to be called the Eastern Transvaal, runs along the high peaks and passes into the neighbouring mountain kingdom of Swaziland where the King, bless him, has 14 wives and a private jet big enough to take them all shopping at Harrods. Barberton is an early Voortrekker settlement, site of South Africa's first gold exchange. El Dorado run by early Dutch settlers who led their ox-wagons in a great exodus from the western Cape in the 19^th century, fed up with English taxes and later the abolition of slavery which hit their pride as well as their pockets. They set up the first South African Republic. Then these invariably courteous and hospitable people dreamt up Apartheid. And we all know how that ended. 

CC's little kingdom is a strip carved out of the bush. It has a tower, a windsock which has seen better days, a hangar, guest rooms, a serious security perimeter, a Golden Retriever mut who sits calmly in the back of the Cessna while CC performs loops and barrel rolls and a cat called Pussy which mostly just sits. He has a well-stocked bar, speakers the size of small houses thumping out rock music and an obsessively tidy hangar where he keeps his beloved Cessna in fighting trim.

CC runs his fiefdom with the help of his partner Tine von Heynitz, the steadying hand who keeps his wings level. Tine brims with charm and good humour but a pushover she is not. Which is just as well because life for a modern woman in the bush, in deeply conservative Afrikaans country can be tricky. Here, when a woman rides in a car driven by a man who is not her husband she is expected to sit in the back. She snorts at the very thought.

Now that Mandela's Olympian authority is no longer there to keep a lid on the fissures that run deep and wide in South Africa the future is by no means obvious. Life can can be unsettled and unsettling. She edits his absorbing, crisply-written book “Bush and Mountain Flying". It has a section on survival in the bush. Especially helpful is the bit about edible snakes. Tine is a PhD,an accomplished photographer; she's building a simple but lovely fly-in lodge at the end of the runway. (Check out Bush Rock on Facebook). She puts up with endless pilot bullshit with good humour and she's a terrific hostess. She makes a great wingman.

Tine, the wingman and the flying pooch

 Up at dawn to get ahead of the African sun hammering down on the veldt, pushing the temperature up and the Cessna's performance down. Short field take offs, very short field take offs and what the Monty Python crew might call silly short field take offs. Ditto landings. Narrow canyon turns at 4500 feet with turbulent downdrafts washing over crests above us in 30 degree heat along the Swazi border; spin recovery; flying through stalls with full power and full flaps which is a bit like aviating in a food mixer; helicopter-style circuits at tree-top level into his bumpy grass strip, in 90 seconds flat from take-off roll to touchdown, and blissfully peaceful landings into mountain strips surrounded by high ground.

If you're interested see the videos shot by Quentin “Iceman” Steyn, CC's co-instructor on Facebook

CC and the team

For me this tryst with extreme flying was the latest stage in a slow process of recovery from two bouts of major surgery followed by a gruelling,10-week circumnavigation of Africa in 2011 starting in the UK in my single-engine Piper Archer III: 18,000 nautical miles and counting. See earlier posts on this blog.

This tale is more than about high jinks. CC is a man on a mission. Far too many pilots he believes die flying in bush country or mountainous terrain around the world because they simply don't understand the hazards involved and how to avoid them. What's astonishing is that the majority of these fatalities are not, as you might expect, weekend flyers with low hours and unsuitable aircraft. They are, in the main, highly experienced pilots, often with commercial ratings, flying high powered aircraft into mountains they don't understand or respect. “They haven't been properly trained” he says” so they end up flying into a trap”.

CC isn't a great fan of run-of-the-mill flying schools. He sees them as conveyor belts preparing pilots to fly push-button jets. Or private pilots who just want to get their license in a hurry. Flying schools teach that what keeps you safe is planning and flying within the limits of your aircraft. But how do you know, CC asks, what those limits are in your particular flying machine if you haven't explored them?

At the heart of his course are exercises which do just that. His teaching methods are, by his own admission, extreme - even dangerous: flying perilously close to stall speeds at low altitude for example. No weather forecasts. No flight plans. Just look out of the window and fly. And if something comes up, deal with it. The antithesis of everything you're taught at flight school.

If he could, he'd rewrite syllabus for student pilots. Exploring the very limits of what their aircraft can and can't do will, he argues, make them safer, better pilots. Thousands of pilots of course qualify and become safer and better without resorting to these extremes through steady experience and practice. But CC has a point. Commercial pilots can fly big jets with the help of “pilot-proof” fly-by-wire systems. But how many could hand-fly their way out of trouble? How many are trained to do so? Come to that how many of the many thousands of hours they clock up are spent hand-flying? 

This straight talking does not endear him to the civil aviation authorities or the more straight-laced flying community. They think he's a bit of a wild man which is understandable, given some of the stunts he's pulled and his occasional wisecracks like “ People who can't fly play golf`'.

But he makes his case with strong, evidence-based conviction. He is relentlessly focussed. He has a deep understanding of his trade rooted in the humility of a man who is not afraid to fess up to, and learn from, his mistakes.

And it works. You're not a bush, let alone a mountain pilot, at the end of his course. But you come out the other end at one with your aircraft. The lingering fears you carry with you from flight school of pushing the envelope evaporate. You are “in the zone”, like a tennis player whose racket is an extension of his intuitive self.  

Sadly there was one fatality on the course: a frog who clambered in through my window. Some African frogs apparently climb walls. Or maybe CC drives them up the wall. Anyway I went to bed on the 2^nd night, exhausted, pole-axed. There was a funny smell in my bed. “Oh dear I pong” I thought “ I'd better have a shower”. That didn't seem to make a difference. I was too tired to care. I woke at five, just as dawn broke. I slipped my hand under my pillow. I felt a soft, mushy blob which, in my semi-comatose state I reasoned, must be the remains of an apple I'd eaten. It was, I'm sad to report, the remains of a blameless frog who had penetrated our perimeter and perished silently. If it croaked I never heard.

That little tragedy aside it was a time of gifts for me, as it has been for over 400 other pilots . 

www.bushair.co.za