- AAAB3528
- Item
- 1978 [date recorded]
CALL NUMBER: T3218:0001 RECORDED: [location unknown], 1978 SUMMARY: Hal Wilson discusses: growing up in England; how he got interested in aviation; joining the Royal Air Service; being demobilized after the war; coming to Canada; refreshing his pilot's license so he could work with Eve brothers; starting in Victoria on the Lansdowne field; starting to instruct in 1928; differences in opinion between himself and Eve; description of a plane accident at Port Townsend; coming to work in Vancouver in 1929 with the Aero Club of B.C.- became an instructor for them; training procedures for pilots at this time; Pacific National Exhibition and Aero Club story; process of teaching people to fly -- he was interested in quality of pilots, not quantity; search-and-rescue operations; women in air school; trouble with planes when he was instructing; flying backwards; the Dobbins brothers and Dominion Airways; Harold Walker's crash; crashes always affected the airplane business badly; with Aero Club for 10 years; in 1939, he was sent to Dauphin, Manitoba for war effort;.; CALL NUMBER: T3218:0002 RECORDED: [location unknown], 1978 SUMMARY: TRACK 1: Hal Wilson discusses: end of war; training program in Dauphin -- what recruits were taught; his first solo flight; why a fire wall was put on the cowlings; partridge shooting anecdote; did not fly up the coast too much; B.C. Airlines; the air show -- aerobatics, tricks; Ginger Coote. TRACK 2: Hal Wilson discusses: Ginger Coote (cont'd); difficulty in convincing people that air transportation was a good idea; some pilots used to fly and drink; flight regulations in 1928-29, no real regulations until 1932; suspended license procedure; advent of radio in airplanes; how the Vancouver-Victoria-Seattle service came into being; story about flying the Bishop of Hong Kong; did not always fly with a mechanic; no competition between TCA and Canadian Pacific Air; he always enjoyed flying. (End of interview);