Chapter #357 (Pietermaritzburg) regularly has "breakfast" fly-ins where chapter members fly their aircraft to somebody's air strip for breakfast. Normally it's something like bacon and eggs but this time it didn't quite work out as planned...
We had a great "breakfast" fly in to Siteka on Sunday. The reason for the inverted commas will become clear later in this email!
We had eight planes arrive, 4 RV's!!, a Tripacer, a Bushbaby, a Vagabond and my Grumman. It realy is great to see chaps from Virginia and even Vryheid joining us. I was third plane to arrive and I'm sure Steve, Dave and their spouses were pleased to see my skottel off loaded and setup in front of the old hangar. They had that relieved and hungry look as they approached the skottel with their eggs and bacon.
The hungry looks came back as we realised that we had no matches with which to light the the said skottel, but no big problem, I reported, as I had heard radio reports of many more planes on there way. A fair amount of panic started setting in as the eighth plane landed with no matches!!! We now had about 15 hungry folk and I had started trying to light avgas soaked grass with spectacles, sparks from stones, etc. Eventually Steve removed his battery and with the help of some bailing wire we made some fine sparks that refused to light the avgas soaked grass.
At this stage we had given up and had resigned ourselves to bacon and eggs at home for Sunday lunch. I then redeemed my match forgetfulness by the brilliant idea of leaving the avgas soaked grass out of the equation and rather ignite the gas from the skottel with Steve's battery created spark, the way all modern lighters work!! The skottel was soon lit, using this method, and cooking started with much relief.
As everyone had got their bacon, tomatoes, sausages etc. onto the skottel I noticed the flame becoming rather small and so started trying to set the thing to get more flame. As we watched the flame get smaller and smaller the talk seemed to go quieter and quieter and by the time I announced that the new problem was now positively identified as the gas bottle being empty no one seemed that interested any more and a rather hungry looking bunch of people started packing up for bacon and egg lunches at home, I did hear one mention of a lynching party!
Mick we all hope you are making a speedy recovery as we really missed you and your fine hospitaliy on this Siteka breakfast!! I reckon every plane will have a box of matches next fly in breakfast and I assure you all that I will never not check the gas bottle again!!
