Tales

An amusing incident that happened West of Bourke involved a farmer who owned and operated a sheep mustering Cessna 150. The 150 had powerful loudspeakers fitted on the wing struts as well as a siren. The loudspeakers connected to a microphone in the cockpit and were often used for rounding up the sheep when they started to ignore the siren/hooter. When you take a farmer off his horse and put him on a motorbike, his hoots and hollers to the sheep stay unaltered — hey up, woo woo woo, piss off etc. The same principle applies when you put him in an aeroplane fitted with a microphone and loudspeakers. “You have to be careful to make sure that the microphone is turned off when you are talking” he informs me. Definitely the lighter side of aviation! “The blokes on the ground can hear everything that you say about them”. “You call them stupid bastards! — they’ll have it out with you when you get back on the ground”. An interesting twist to the fly on the wall scenario. Stooging around during a lull in the mustering operations we noticed a car going up the highway, and thought of another use for the speaker system. The 150 had no trouble in keeping pace with the car above and behind him in the blind spot above his roof. The driver was invited to do many things, some of which were not complimentary — until he stopped; at which point we suddenly overtook him and were unmasked in our activity. And so we flew away and fortunately never saw that car or its driver again — you can be lucky sometimes. (Anonymous)

Door Crashersl

Then there was the story about the East-West F27 pilot who was apparently fairly adept with an axe! It seems an agitated flight attendant told him a passenger was in the toilet, that the lock was broken and would not yield to the standard external T-bar emergency key. Calling to the occupant to stand well back, our Captain rolled up his sleeves and delivered half a dozen well placed David Foster type blows to the door, leaving a good sized opening. In his dry fashion he later wrote in the maintenance log “Toilet Door U/S”. (J Williams, Hobart, 7001)

An Appreciative Audience 

All first solos are guaranteed to be memorable events. Recently a good friend of mine safely passed this milestone, but added extra memories that caused many a smile along the way. Having completed the obligatory white knuckled circuit and approach, he managed to execute a safe but rather tense and heavy, undercarriage testing landing. Sensing an unexpected vibration as he taxied off the runway, he managed to convince himself that he had punctured a tyre as a result of his hefty connection with the tarmac. His sweaty palms guided the Cessna 152 onto the taxiway, where, after bringing the aircraft to a halt and opening the door, he was able to confirm that his suspicions were groundless. However his relief soon turned to embarrassment when his expensive sunglasses slipped off his sweat moistened nose and dropped to the ground. Cursing, he hopped down from the cockpit to retrieve them, only to find that the now unrestrained aircraft began to gently roll away from him along the taxiway! The undignified scramble back into the cockpit was the icing on the cake for the group of well wishers assembled in the viewing area, watching the whole incident through binoculars! My only disappointment was that we did not have a radio in our possession. To this day, we have not been told the content of the comments from the tower, but I’m sure it would have made and interesting addition to your “On the Airbands” column! (Anonymous)

Kick Start See

We were doing a dawn flight at 805 Sqn at HMAS Albatross back when the A-4 Skyhawk was still flying in RAN colours. The pilots were strapped in and we had pulled the GTC (Ground Control Starter) alongside and hooked it onto the aircraft. After two attempts to start the GTC, both ending in a wet start, the agitated pilot yelled out to “Give the ?! starter a kick”. I immediately walked around and gave the AB (who was flicking the switches) a kick up the bum. After everyone had finally settled themselves down and composed themselves from laughing so much, the damn thing started! (G Lawrie, Alexandra, 4572)