"Pigs in space" was just one name police were called on this day in 1988, as they conducted aerial speed checks on the Hume Highway.
About five days a fortnight, a Senior Constable had been hopping into a light aircraft and monitoring the speed of drivers on NSW highways.
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The previous morning, Senior Constable Small had caught 20 speeding drivers within the short timeframe of an hour and a half, the fastest travelling at 153 kilometres an hour.
The day before that, 43 drivers were clocked in less than two hours.
The person doing the aerial speed check would monitor a stretch of road, between two lines 500 metres apart.
Cars travelling more than 16 per cent over the speed limit would be clocked, and Senior Constable Small would radio the police on the ground, giving a description of the speeding car and how fast it was travelling.
He'd then watch the car get pulled over to ensure the ground police got the right one.
Being a flying policeman had its advantages when it came to booking speeding cars.
Senior Constable Small recalled a driver who failed to pull over, but lost the race against the plane, which tailed him from Wyong to Newcastle and booked him there.
He recalled another instance where a speeding driver did a U-turn in the middle of the highway, but could not escape the plane's bird's eye view, and was later found hiding under a house.
