Danny Cabooter (01/03/1939)

Danny Cabooter comes from the Westhoek and was born on March 1, 1939. His parents were dealers in fuels, oils, fats and calciumcarbite. He was fascinated by aviation as he lived close to the military base of Koksijde and heard Spitfires flying overhead every day. One afternoon he heard the sputter of a stalling engine, and afterwards learned that the pilot had crashed and died, it made a deep impression on him.

Due to the sudden death of his two younger brothers, his parents did not allow him to practice a dangerous profession such as a pilot and he became an air traffic controller. In that position he was assigned as temporary flying personnel and experienced flights on jets such as CF100, T33 and Fouga. After his return from a foreign mission from Africa, he was able to start as a student pilot in the air component of the Army.

He started training at the Elementaire Vliegschool at Goetsenhoven on SV4 and finished as an instructor in Brasschaat in 1978.

Entrepreneurship was in his blood and he started as commercial director at Transmarcom. He flew their new twin-engine plane from Gander to Shannon  across the Atlantic in 12 hours. There was no GPS yet and it was navigating with “time & heading”. At Transmarcom he sold Cessna aircraft until reliability reduced production. He sold his last plane to Bosal, where he started working as a pilot. He flew to numerous international destinations until 2015. At that time he also worked at Flying Group as a training manager, which brought even more variety to his flying career.

In the meantime he was already the proud owner of an SV-4 that he had purchased from the government in 1976. His wife Patricia designed the butterfly motif and Danny flew it until 2000, after which the aircraft was painted in a military colour scheme.

Danny knew that the prototype of the SV-4 was built in Deurne in 1933 and that is how the idea of a permanent museum ripened. He was able to convince Karel Bos, Bosal's CEO and aircraft fanatic, to join in that dream and to finance the project.

Karel supplemented the museum with Spitfire, Harvard and WWI aircraft. Intensive training was done annually at Duxford and Danny gave demonstrations on Spitfire. To expand the SV-4 aircraft fleet, enthusiastic pilots were urged to become owners. For example, there are currently about 30 flying SV-4 biplanes in Belgium, 10 of which are in the museum.

The organisation of the Stampe Fly Ins is a great success and is approaching the milestone of 30. Danny has 25,000 flying hours and is an honorary citizen of Deurne and has his place on the airport's "wall of fame".