'The wingtips were almost touching the waves': Pilot recalls close call

But the incident didn't put him off being in the air, and over the years has spent many hours flying planes - even helping out with Warrnambool's 413 Squadron which will hold an information day in March.

Mr Robinson, who was the former police chief inspector, has recently returned to live in the region where he helped with the public campaign to get Warrnambool's rescue helicopter service.

But it was a close call many years ago that got Mr Robinson interested in flying.

It was on his second ever jump when the parachute failed.

"It was a military chute called a Jolly Green Giant ... the sleeve was meant to slow the opening process but the sleeve actually locked," Mr Robinson said.

"So you had this streamer effect with me on the end.

"Being only my second jump, I didn't fully comprehend the position I was in."

Mr Robinson said he remembered trying to untangle the shrouds. "The chute should have opened at 2700 feet. I think it was about 800 feet when we got it sorted out and I got safely down on the ground," he said.

"It had taken a fair bit of time off the jump time of course."

Mr Robinson still had one more jump to make but with a few weeks between them, he said he'd had too much time to think about it.

"I decided the best idea was to learn to fly the plane, which I did," he said.

But even during his long flying career, he had two engine failures. However, he said they were "no big deal".

"Your training teaches you how to deal with that," he said. "I've flown since I was 25."

Mr Robinson got his commercial pilots licence, and during his career in the Victorian police force he was operations manager and then officer in charge of the police air wing.

In the mid-1980s he flew a Piper Comanche from Adelaide to Melbourne and set a world speed record.

Over the years he has owned three aeroplanes and been a part-owner of a glider.

"I haven't flown now for 18 months. Towing gliders in Ararat was the last thing I was doing," he said.

Amongst his other flying achievements is taking an Airbus A320 under the Sydney harbour bridge - albeit in a flight simulator.

He said his friend who worked at Ansett airlines once let him jump in the pilot's seat of the flight simulator.

"It looks like a real aeroplane," he said.

"I proved that an A320 will fit under the Sydney Harbour bridge because I actually flew the simulator under there.

"The wingtips were almost touching the waves. But it fits."

Mr Robinson also used to fly a light twin-engine aircraft off the West Head gunnery range as target practice for the Navy.

"I was the target for the trainees learning to use the radar," he said.

"I'd just fly to the location, do what they asked. What they did like was I was quite happy to jink the aircraft a lot, simulating an enemy."

When Mr Robinson first moved to Warrnambool, he joined the 413 Squadron as the flying instructor to teach kids the principals of aviation and organising flying training for them.

"That's our future, so supporting 413 Squadron is very easy to do and I had a great time with the kids," he said.

The 413 Squadron will hold a recruit information night for Australian Air Force cadets on Thursday, March 7 at 6.45pm at the barracks on Pertobe Road.

Temporary commanding officer Graeme Cox said about 20 people turned up to their open night last year.

He said each week they had about 60 people from all over the district come to the squadron events - travelling from as far as Portland and Camperdown.