My Account
Neal Satherley is still flying. Maybe not a foot above the ground as he used to have to, spraying cotton in Zimbabwe, or doing aerobatics and competitions in Palmerston North, but he’s still getting to great altitudes at 83, despite surviving two aircraft crashes. A few weeks ago he went up with a mate from the Warkworth Aero Club and “had a little fly”. The builder-turned-pilot spoke to Mahurangi Matters about his adventurous life in the skies.
I did my builder’s apprenticeship in Marton, where I grew up. I started a flying club there and bought a plane together with a couple of mates. I flew it up from Rotorua. I was the only one with a pilot’s licence at the time. We’d agreed with a local farmer that we could use his land for an airstrip, and we got in an instructor up from Palmerston North to give members some training.
At that stage, in the 60s, flying was recreational for me. With my private pilot’s licence, I was doing competitions in Palmerston North to quite decent local audiences for the time. I had a little four-seater and I would take friends from Marton to Mt Egmont (now called Mt Taranaki), or alternatively Mt Ruapehu. The distance was much the same and on a beautiful day the scenery was gorgeous.
Flying seemed to pursue me as a builder, and me it. In 1969, I moved to Samoa with my wife Fay and our four children. I was trying to get an airline started for local passengers. We brought two planes in from New Zealand by ship with their wings removed. I remember driving a wingless craft from the wharf to the airstrip, which you’d never be able to do now. By the end of my six-month stint we’d built two landing strips across the two main islands, Savai’i and Upolo. As well as goods, we began transporting people, including the local police. We found a whole new island once, identifying it from the air. It was just underwater and it was a shipping hazard.
During the time we were there, Neil Armstrong and his crew returned to earth after going to the moon. What was left of Apollo 11 blazed through the sky, landing in the sea 340 miles east of Tutuila, in American Samoa. A few weeks earlier, I had jokingly radioed the recovery ship, an aircraft carrier called the USS Hornet, asking permission to land on deck. They didn’t take kindly to my sense of humour and I was told that if I came within 15 miles of the ship, I’d be shot down. I didn’t think I’d be allowed, but you’ve got to ask!
It wasn’t until we came back from Samoa and I was in my thirties when I got my commercial licence. “Ditch” Harding at Wanganui Aero Work offered me a job. I had built a pool for him and he was pleased with it. He knew I had my commercial licence and so I moved to Whanganui.
At Wanganui Aero Work I was top dressing all around the Manawatu, south Taranaki and over to the Wairarapa. Then I went up to work for Farmers Aerial in Dargaville. We would spray insecticides in the morning when it was calm, then do the top dressing in the afternoon when the wind had come up.
In the mid-80s I got a call from Agricair to work in Zimbabwe. I did two stints there, one in 1986 and again in 1987. There were some Kiwis working out there at the time and I went out with two other pilots. Sadly, both of them have died since.
We were spraying cotton to kill boll weevil. The insecticide was mixed with molasses to make it stick to the crop and it was changed every 10 days because the bugs became immune. We had to fly in really low, underneath the power lines to get good coverage before it evaporated. The lines would sag in the heat of the afternoon, making it even harder. There’s one flight in particular that reminds me how close to the ground we got.
Generally a worker would stand at a peg marking what we had yet to cover, holding up a stick with a bag on it before moving on to the next area. On this occasion he hadn’t moved. Well, I did a pass and next thing, felt a whack on the propellor. I had come in so low that I had taken the top off the stick. The person failing to do the marking certainly had a close shave!
The second time I worked in Zimbabwe I had a scary experience of my own. I was flying up north and although we had long range tanks, I had run short of fuel. I called for a tanker and when I landed, the locals took me from the airstrip to this big, gated property. As we were walking there, one of them said in broken English, “Boss, dogs will eat you.”
Sure enough, inside the gates were two dogs, a rottweiler and a Dobermann. Well, I put my hand up against the fence and the Dobermann licked it. I took a deep breath and entered the property, walking up the driveway with a dog either side of me. This was much to the amazement of the wide-eyed locals, who I’m quite sure would have been eaten if they’d been in my place.
In 1988, I was asked to go back again, this time flying from Zimbabwe to Sudan, but Fay said “No”. It was good money. We were told we had to fly at tree top height, because if you flew too high they’d shoot a rocket at you and if you flew too low they’d shoot a gun at you. Fay wouldn’t let me go, she said it was just too risky. That’s about the only time I’ve haven’t flown because of danger. I had plenty of work to do here anyway.
I’ve been involved in two crashes, one in Thames in 1989 when a wheel fell off on take-off. The leg dug into the ground and turned the aircraft around and over a bank. Luckily the bank took the other wheels off and the bottom of the hopper, but then one wing touched a hill and swung me into it too. That hurt a bit. It practically knocked my chin off. I was black and blue all over.
I got it right the second time, when I crashed backwards. That was less than 18 months, later on Fay’s birthday. The engine failed on take-off from Kerikeri airport with a load on. Because it was so slow, the aircraft dropped one wing, which touched some scrub and spun the whole thing right around. I crashed right in the middle of the road. It burst into flames straight away. It caught fire which shot up past the cockpit. I thought I’d better get out of there and managed to jump out. Not long afterwards, I went down to Hamilton and got another aeroplane and carried on working.
Warkworth has been home for 36 years now. As was sadly often the case in my career, I moved here to replace a pilot who had been killed. I had started the Central Aerial Co-operative in Whanganui, which was taken over by Fieldair and I got transferred up here when the pilot died. Back then we thought it was a nice, quiet little town. We loved the sea and going out fishing on the boat. Snells was a favourite spot to go to on a Sunday. We’d sit on the beach and eat fish and chips.
I flew for about three or four more years before going back into building. I helped build the Salty Dog at Snells Beach and three homes for my family, two in Millward Drive and one in Percy Street. We built dozens of houses in new subdivisions.
Reflecting on my flying career, you could say I flew professionally for 25 years and racked up around 14,000 hours in the air. I stopped when I felt I’d done enough. Work was decreasing in the top dressing business and new requirements meant I’d have to get a rating (sit an exam) to fly a jet-propelled aircraft, which was something I’d been doing for years. It also became too expensive over time to maintain my licence. At my age, it has to be renewed every six months and it can cost as much as $4000 depending on the health checks they want to do, like an ECG. I’m still a member of the local aero club and I really enjoy getting out. A couple of months ago we drove to Dairy Flat Aeroclub and they flew about 100 of us from the RSA down to Ardmore for the Warbirds. That was a great day.
