Two from my days in the RAF.

Someone was sent over to the store for a tin of propeller pitch.

But the best was an airframe Mech on Master Diversion Flight who should have known much better. He was sent round the station looking for the jacks so that we could do a retraction test on a Chipmunk.

Once he had finaly caught on he was not happy.

Some time later he was send out to change the tail wheel on the Chipmunk and asked where the jack was. He was told he didn't need one and he got really cross. Thing was...it was true. you could take the nut off, put your back under the tailplane, lift and remove the axle pin, change the wheel and replace the axle pin.

Likewise, to take a mainwheel off to work on the brakes a couple of people would put their backs under the wing and lift while a tool box was shoved under the bottom of the oleo leg and the aircraft lowered back onto that.

Not really a flying tale, but we had a flat roof with aeroplanes on, so -

On Hermes, we had a special section of the kitchens, down in the bowels, near the boiler-room, where it was always very hot, and in which was made a particular part of our daily diet.

So - whenever we were told to go and hide for a while, or if we had chosen to disappear, when challenged, we would say we had - been down to the bakery for a loaf. -

And much more recently,  I used to commute to and from work on a bicycle. On this day, I was particularly tardy, and when the 'manager' happened to wander past, he queried my lateness.

"Sorry", I replied, "I couldn't get my bike started." The 'manager' nodded acceptance, wandered off about ten paces, realised, turned, saw that everybody within earshot was laughing, thought better of it, and kept on going! 

During an upgrade to the Nimrods the company I work for won an order to supply cables & connectors to link the various black boxes around the tail section of the aircraft. The spec called out the length of the cables required. We made & supplied 30 sets of cable assemblies. A short time later we got a call to say that some of the cables had been made too short & wouldn't reach between the black boxes & some were too long so they were sending them back.....

Once we got them back we were confused to find them correct to drawing....turns out every single Nimrod is a different size hence some cables were too short & some too long........!!!

Similar thing with the VC10 inflight refueling tankers......one of our guys was on an airbase & his host said..."..we won't go over there...I hate to see grown men crying...." Turns out the fitters had measured all the hydraulic pipes on an aircraft & used these as a pattern to make new ones for the rest of the fleet...you can imagine their disappointment when they found every aircraft was different!!!!

Also on the VC10s they once found a double mattress in one of the wing tanks.......apparently the fitters used to lie on them in the tanks whilst working.......comment from the aircrew..."H'mmm I always wondered why the port tank took less than the starboard one..." Asked what the most unusual thing they had ever found in a tank the answer was "a Bike"......apparently they hid a blokes bike in a wing tank for a laugh & forgot it was there when they replaced the inspection panel.........

As the saying goes...."....those who like aircraft & sausages should never see them being made......"

While I was in Aden on the Maintenance Unit we had to carry out a program of modifications on the Scottish Aviation Twin Pioneers. One of the mods was to fit inspection panels in the underside of the engine nacelles for fire extinguishers.

The mod kits came with all the part pre-cut and shaped. The snag was that all the Twin Pins were different, even the nacelle on on side of the aircraft could have the frames (Formers) two inches diffence in spacing form the other side. IT seems that they didn't even build them on jigs!

And I always thought that they were the exception rather than the rule. I see from Steve's story that I was wrong.

Also on the Twin Pins. And order came down that all the control cables had to be changed as some had been found fraying. All the controls, the flaps and the slats are cable operated.

Now the rule on aircraft is, you remove one cable and fit its replacement before going o to the next cable. Of course the stores didn't have anything like enough cables so we were give the order, Replace them with bits of string until we get the parts in. Well, the aircraft sat around the hangar looking like cats cradles in a fit for weeks.

When the cables did arrive it took weeks to sort them out and get everything working in the proper direction and sequence.

There is a preserved  Argosy in New Zealand, complete with the slip-in passenger module, where you can sit and have tea and biscuits whilst watching a film of Argosys' in action. Very olde worlde. In the talk that followed, we were told that the aircraft was liked by its pilots for the spacious "office", but loathed by the engineers because, being hand built, each aircraft was different. Even more annoying was the fact that they needed three sets of tools, as the nuts and bolts were to different standards.

 But then, he said , came the properly engineered Hercules, and everything else was instantly obsolecent at best. 

Now this is a true story, I used to fly at a southern club, and we had one guy who wasn't that good, but wouldn't be told anyhow someone passed him out of the training scheme so he could fly solo.

One fine day he was wizzing his model all over the place performing loops rolls, and low passes. The model then came in to land, and another pilot went to pick it up. Our hapless flyer asked what he was doing when it became apparent that it was the other guy's model.

I transpired that he had lost sight of his model and started flying someone elses, what was going through his mind as he performed his flight is anyones business.

Needless to say his white card was removed soon after, and he never did find his model.

Andy

Just a three weeks ago I provided a lot of laughter for the club.

I had a trainer that I wanted to crash for the cameras to illustrate something for an article that I am writing.

I arrived at the flying field and off loaded the models including the ARTF trainer in the pit area. Then I drove off to the car park.

As I did so I heard a funny sound and wondered what was wrong with the car. There was nothing wrong with it. I had just driven over the trainer's tail and one wing tip. I could hear the howls of laughter in the pits from the car park.

 Same as Eric,not really an aviation tale but indirectly connected.I was on that thing with a roof  with aircraft operating from it,Hermes.Our squadron aircraft used to bomb,straff a target called the straff target,now this is a piece of wood with a hole in it which is towed behind the ship at speed and this produces  a plume of water to shoot up in the air through the hole in the wood,got the picture?Now some evil sod said on the ships daily news a "Splash Target Coxwain" was required,you always get one don't you?His application was duly processed through all the major depts,navigation,a/c rec.etc and the last one was to the air weapon supply party chief,evil bast**d,who asked this young junior seaman to report to him for missile evasion tactics!!!!!!!He stood this young kid at the bottom of a deck ladder and threw all kinds of objects at him saying if one hit him he would fail,there was books,beer cans,soup cans you name it it was thrown,and this kid to his credit dived here,there, jumped, rolled,ran and never got hit,stood proudly up at the end and said "Have I passed?"To his credit the chief had a wonderful certificate made and framed,gave him his tot and a crate of beer.

These flat top tales reminded me of the best laugh we ever got in Aden.

HMS Centaur was in Aden and she was flying her Scimitars. One of these had total hydraulic failure. They got the undercarriage down but had no flaps etc. It was decied that the aircraft would land on Khormaksar, our RAF station.

Now Khormaksar has a runway that runs across a narrow strip of land, it starts on one beach and ends at a shallow lagoon. At each end there is a crash barrier that can be raised and lowered. It consisted of two arms with a lot of nylon straps between them.

Needless to say word of the emergency spread and there was a good audience. The Scimitar made a perfect but very fast landing and streaked down the runway towards the barrier. As it approached  the barrier it went DOWN, The Scimitar shot over it, straight into the lagoon and the barrier came back up. The Scimtar sank in the mud up to the wings.

It seems that there was a bit of confusion in the tower and someone hit the barrier button which was a "One button up, one button down" system. Realised what they had done and hit the button again. Perfect timing.

The Scimitar was a write off by the time the got it out of the mud..

The icing on the cake came later. The local flight safety magazine ran a caption contest for the picture of the aircraft sitting in the mud. The winning captions was "A bit off Centaur."

Do you want a real funny?When I have a message from the forum moderator it begins:-

"Hello Sailor"!!!! make opf that what you will.

 why does the Navy seem to have all the fun eh? Sailor?????