Short Finals

After an anxious examination, they decided they had finally found one and duly delivered the animal to its owner. Imagine their surprise when the elderly lady owner, on seeing the cat said, “That’s not my cat!”. The well-meaning cargo officer insisted that it was, as all the documentation was in order but the lady was equally insistent it couldn’t be.

After some minutes of discussion and with increasing anxiety, the cargo officer finally asked how she could be so sure it wasn’t her pet, to which she replied: “My cat died last week and I was flying it home for burial!” Well so much for good thoughts!

Up, Up and Away. . .

One of the nicest things about my job is being able to fly in a wide variety of planes. Something that I had never done though and had always wanted to, was simply to fly in a hot air balloon. I guess most of us have wanted to give this form of aviation a run, though if you are like me you had never really got it together to the point of actually doing it. Well, that wish was fulfilled recently when Judy Lynne of Balloon Aloft invited me to one of their excellent champagne breakfast balloon flights out of Canberra.

Well what was it like? Obviously different to anything I had ever previously done in the air, indeed much more pleasant than being inverted and pulling G’s that make you remember yesterday’s lunch. Truly though, it is an exceptional experience and I commend anybody who has the slightest inclination to try it to contact Balloon Aloft and share the experience. You will be amazed at the vertical climb rate of the modern hot air balloon, well over 1500fpm in some instances and at the dragon-like roar of the butane burners immediately above one’s head. Drifting low over the vast expanse of the new Parliament House at Canberra, over the many embassies and above the lake made me think that perhaps this was what aviation was really meant to be-peace and pure relaxation just as the birds enjoy it.

If perhaps I have succeeded in whetting your appetite then phone Judy on (02) 607 2255 for the contact of a Balloon Aloft operation near you.

Doublespeak at its best.

An interesting item from UPI concerns last year’s Doublespeak Awards from the US-based National Council of English Teachers.

As you can imagine, aerospace was way up there with the best in developing words that nobody had ever heard before, nobody understood and nobody wanted to remember, let alone seriously t!3II somebody else!

The winning ‘entrant’ was NASA, where during the Challenger investigations, a senior official unearthed this gem of English prose: “The normal process during the countdown is that the countdown proceeds, assuming we are in a go posture, and at various points during the countdown we tag up the operational loops and face to face in the firing room to ascertain the facts that project elements that are monitoring the data and that are understanding the situation as we proceed are still in the go direction. ” Golly, gee whiz, can you beat that- but the Pentagon almost did- check this next one! The US Dept of Defence must have a section purely tasked with euphemisms as instanced by the following. Temporary coffins are technically designated as “aluminium transfer cases”, a simple hammer becomes a “manually powered fastener-driving impact device”, a flashlight an “emergency exit light”, a steel nut a “hexiform rotatable surface compression unit”, and a tent part of the “Marine Corps expeditionary soft shelter system” or a “frame supported tension structure”. And if you think that all that is a little bit funny then the funniest part is that the people who created it are deadly serious!

Bargain of the century dept.

Those readers approaching their fortieth birthday will no doubt remember the sales battle that took place during the late fifties and early sixties when it came time to replace our Canberra bomber fleet. An interesting item in a recent· edition of RAAF News highlights just how times have changed, and with it the cost of modern combat kit.

It seems that while reorganising their records unit, the boys at the RAAF Museum, Point Cook, unearthed a swathe of documents regarding a firm proposal from the North American Aviation company. North America of course had built some spectacularly successful aircraft in its time, including the legendary Mustang, Sabre and Super Sabre jets. Its 1958 offer to the RAAF consisted of no less than 100 A-3J Vigilante bombers for the mere sum of $A4. 5m. And that’s not a unit price but a programme price! This included technical assistance and the aircraft being assembled locally by CAC.

In the end of course we opted for two dozen F-111s which though contracted for during the early sixties did not become operational at Amberley till 1973.

In many ways this was a blessing in disguise as the Canberras soldiered on to see active duty in Vietnam, a role they excelled in, and in later life became more than useful high altitude photo recce aircraft. The F-111s meanwhile became ‘low mileage’ machines by comparison with the USAF 111 fleet and nowadays are looked upon worldwide as a unique and highly effective tactical strike aircraft. As for the Vigilante, it was withdrawn from USN service during the seventies after a totally inauspicious career and now serves only as a gate guard to a number of US Navy bases.