Col Pay – 50 Years An Ag Pilot

Although in his 70s he still flies on spraying and fire bombing missions and is a regular performer at airshows. He also still holds his instructor’s rating and is licensed to perform low level aerobatics. He has in excess of 30,000 hours on a variety of types, mostly spent very close to the ground.

Quiet and reserved, Col has never been much on publicity. He is the quintessential laconic Australian but he loves his aeroplanes and is a shrewd judge of men. His communication is his flying and he is very good at it. He has been thrilling the crowds at air shows for a long time.

Col Pay’s bread and butter has always been his successful crop dusting business, which he runs out of Scone airport in NSW and Krui near Wee Waa. But ‘his toys’, as he calls them, are the aircraft of World War 2. Aircraft like the Spitfire, the Mustang and the Kittyhawk.

For many years he owned and flew the only Spitfire in Australia, a Mark VIII which he restored from scratch. This was A58-758, the last of 656 Spitfires supplied to Australia to equip the RAAF in Darwin. When Colin acquired the aircraft it was minus an engine and covered with a tarpaulin. It had seen no action during the war and had gone directly into storage. It ended its days as an instructional airframe at the Sydney Technical College, and later became part of Sid Marshall’s collection of aircraft at Bankstown airport.

In place of the original engine Colin installed a Rolls- Royce Merlin from a Lincoln bomber, and in 1985 it made its first flight from Scone airstrip.

His hangar at Scone is full of working agricultural aircraft like the turbine Air Tractor 802s and 502s.

But there is a myriad number of other types either flying or under restoration.

In the last 30 years he has put back in the air two Kittyhawks, one Spitfire, a Mustang, one A-37 jet and several Cessna Bird Dog spotting aircraft of Vietnam war vintage. He bought a batch of Chipmunks from England and 16 T-28s from Laos.

Colin has owned his Mustang for 30 years. In 1960 it was one of a batch of three bought from the Department of Supply by a man called Titus Oates.

Numerically, more Kittyhawks served with the RAAF than any other type of piston engined fighter aircraft, so it is appropriate that Colin has restored not one but two P-40s. The first one, VH‑KTH was sold for scrap at the end of the war and scavenged for parts before it was buried in a hole in the ground in Alberta, Canada! Partly restored in Canada, it was brought to Australia and restoration was completed by the Pay team. They converted it into a two-seater, although the second seat was effectively a jump seat for a passenger and the aircraft could not be flown from it.

Whether it was something to do with being buried underground or not, the Kitty was a jinxed aircraft. Col’s son Ross is also an experienced pilot. He was flying the Kittyhawk at Wee Waa and had the undercarriage down in the circuit to land when the engine cut dead at 500ft.

Showing great presence of mind he pushed the stick forward and crash landed the aircraft in a paddock, collecting the top of a tall tree in the process. If he had pulled back on the stick to avoid the tree the aircraft would have stalled and dived into the ground.

The aircraft was seriously damaged so Colin started the rebuild process again and finally ended up selling the aircraft to an American pilot from Idaho.

Col then acquired a second Kittyhawk, VH-KTY from New Zealand and started all over again. This aircraft was painted to resemble the aircraft flown by Wing Commander Bobby Gibbes with 3 Squadron RAAF in North Africa.

Colin learned to fly on a tail dragger de Havilland Tiger Moth VH-PCL which he bought in 1958 and still owns.

In recent years he has also used his agricultural aircraft for fire bombing work, not just in Australia but in Portugal. This required an extraordinary flight halfway around the world by working aircraft which would normally, fly no more than 200nm a day! The vegetation in northern Portugal is similar to Australia, with combustible eucalypts and high summer temperatures. Pay’s aircraft have also performed water bombing duties in Italy.

To to get to Portugal, the fleet of six turbine powered 802s made the journey from Scone in 72 hours flying time via the Cocos Islands, Sri Lanka, the Maldives, Egypt and Malta. Cruising at a respectable 160kt the aircraft had been retrofitted with autopilots and satellite navigation systems; even so 12 hours is a long time to be in the air in a single engined aircraft. The hoppers were used as long distance tanks sealed and converted to carry fuel.

Colin has always maintained that his 802s can place a load of fire retardant more accurately on the heart of a fire than helicopters with buckets or bigger water based aircraft like the Canadair CL-215.

One reason Col Pay and his team are so good at rebuilding warbirds is because they have a wealth of experience in maintaining their working aircraft. Colin’s fleet of crop dusters have a hard life and occasionally incur minor damage.

He has a fully equipped workshop and a team of engineers who can fabricate new panels.

At age 74 Col Pay shows no sign of stopping. He is not often seen behind a desk.

The last time I saw him he was in the process of taking the Mustang and the Kittyhawk for a spin. . . a stunning aerobatic display with one of the most beautiful backdrops; the rolling horse pastures around Scone in the Upper Hunter Valley. After the show Colin often adjourns to the Scone RSL and a session of what he calls a QLD. . .

There are lots of aeroplane abbreviations. QNH. VFR.

NOTAM. But QLD doesn’t stand for Queensland but a Quiet Little Drink That’s the thing about owning boys’ toys. There’s no point in having them if you don’t get your fun out of them.