By Jim Hall
Salmon Arm, BC
Fiery crashes, near misses, stunts, mishaps and even encounters with strange lights in the sky. From Harvards and Vulcan Bombers to airliners and fighter jets, Jim Hall has controlled all kinds of aircraft. He started out as a bush pilot in Canada’s North and then went on to various types of flying, from hail suppression and crop spraying to fire patrol, aerial photography and instructing. From his years as a commercial pilot, a bush pilot and in his career as an air traffic controller, Jim Hall has seen it all. His stories are filled with excitement, heroism, high jinks and danger. The factual stories describe various incidents and accidents plus humorous occurrences. This is the history of aeronautics from the view atop the control tower. These are the Tower Tales.
The Birth of Tower Tales
Immediately after an unusual occurrence, incident or accident, an Air Traffic Controller must enter a writeup in the daily Control Tower Logbook. On duty controllers, whether witnessing the event or not, were required to write a report in detail of what they observed and retain it for future use. Accident investigations sometimes take many years to resolve. Controllers needed to refresh their memories and re-familiarize themselves by reading their previous story report before being called on to present their accounts of the occurrence to an accident investigation board of inquiry.
As an Air Traffic Controller, I witnessed many accidents and unusual situations that I had to log. I retained these stories for many years thereafter, knowing they might also be of interest to readers in the future. I also wrote up any unusual event that happened over my many years of flying and added these to the long list of stories I had on file while working in the Towers.
The stories are all factual accounts of the happenings over my 27 years in ATC and my 52 years as a commercial pilot.
For many decades these ATC and flying stories were filed away and forgotten. Then, over the last few years, I took them out, dusted them off and began transferring them from written long-hand to a digital format. My plan was to rewrite them to story form but I kept procrastinating. Then Covid-19 hit and I basically had to stay indoors. Boredom motivated me to complete my book so it could be available to a wider audience. The result is my 90 stories in a 350 page book Tower Tales.
Tower Tales is available at Bookingham Palace Book Store.
Picadilly Mall in Salmon Arm.
Phone — 250-832-3948.
Email — store(at)bookingham.com
And at the Aviators Bookshelf.
Phone — 1-604-999-2411
Email — roberta(at)canadianaviator.com
Tower Tales,
Copyright © Jim Hall, 2020