Yellowknife (Dec 22/03) - "Jim is a legend. The man would always get you home," says Cliff Sabel, QA Manager at Buffalo Airways.

The old adage that once an aircraft is out of control, it is irretrievable did not apply to Jim Smith, the airline's chief pilot until he died unexpectedly Dec. 15.

Once in Deline, while on a training mission, the plane "rolled out. You saw one taxi light this way and one that way," he says. "Well, Jim used differential power and he made the irretrievable, retrieved. Then he would just laugh about it."

Richard deAguayo, DC-3/DC-4 Captain, recalls being airborne with Smith over Deline and the right engine started backfiring. Smith was reading one of his Hot Rod magazines when the plane started shuddering and swerving.

"I started crapping my pants," says deAguayo. "Jim just looks up, looks around, flips the page and goes back to reading."

Rod McBryan, Buffalo Airways' maintenance director, recalls 13 years earlier when he first met Smith. "All I knew was DC-3s and this big guy comes in talking other radial engines. I was visualizing some shooting, crazy, fire-breathing dragon but he tells me the DC-4 gets the best air. I thought what the hell could be better than a 3!"

His first experience in the DC-4 came in '92 flying up the Stikine River in this "monstrosity of a four-engine thing. I'm standing because it's the old days," the 25 year old smirks. "There are 7,000 - foot cliffs on either side of us. We're planning a southbound landing (into Bronson Creek), but we're 600 feet and still nothing. These 7,000-foot cliffs and getting narrower and narrower. It's a white knuckler but Jim's just smiling going, 'doo, doo, doo, doo.'"

Smith's wife, Celine Pelletier, describes him as a typical man -- refusing at all cost to use a map while driving a car.

"I remember in Detroit -- driving around and around and saying 'Just stop and look at the map' to which her husband would reply, 'I'm a pilot, I can fly by the stars. What do I need a map for?'"

Thanksgiving 1993, she recalls thinking he'd crashed when he was three hours passed due. The two were later to hear that Smith's navigation equipment had failed.

He had been heading south from Cambridge Bay, but the tremendous force of the wind sent him drifting.

"When he broke out of the bad weather," says Austin, former base engineer with Buffalo. "He took a star shot and realized he was in northern Saskatchewan. He's one of the best guys I ever flew with that knew how to read the stars."

Among his passions, Smith loved to survey old plane wrecks.

"Jim knew every wreck," says McBryan. "Hell, he can navigate by them. 'Who needs a GPS?' he'd say."

Miles Cane, pilot and engineer, feels privileged to have surveyed so many crash sites with him although the irony is not lost on him: "Here you are, flying around in an antique aircraft, looking at antique graves of the same vintage."

"It is rare for a pilot to be so knowledgeable and so hands-on with his aircraft," says McBryan. "His energy was indefatigable.

McBryan says Smith has endorsed at least 100 pilots in his 13 years with Buffalo -- a monumental accomplishment in itself.

"He's one of a kind. He can wear out two co-pilots and still go home and work on his hot rods!"

Smith is survived by his wife, Celine, and his four children Mikaela, 8, Austin, 7, Adam, 18 and Graeme, 16.