Tales

Losing It

Recently myself and two friends were all set for a scenic ‘City and Beaches’ flight on a busy afternoon at Jandakot. As we eagerly anticipated an enjoyable flight, our pilot, Gerald (a good friend who will be spared the indignity of having his surname revealed) completed the radio formalities with the tower and his preflight engine run up and taxied towards 24R. Holding our position, a glance astern revealed five aircraft behind us but luckily only one in front. The tower was doing its usual efficient job of slotting in the arrivals and departures to keep things going smoothly. As Gerald dialled the change from ground to the circuit frequency, we heard him cry out with a concerned voice … “Oh no! My knob’s fallen off!” Fearing a fate worse than death, we were relieved to find that he had only lost the knob from the tuner of the radio, and gales of laughter erupted in the cabin. However, this merriment soon turned into concern when Gerald explained that he was stuck between frequencies, and had no way of either contacting the tower or the ground controller, and so was unable to proceed. The queue behind was now even longer, and, grateful that we could not transmit or receive, we could only imagine what was being said as we unbuckled and dived onto the floor to try and locate the offending piece of plastic. The sight of feet and rear ends visible through our cabin window must have made a puzzling sight, and having eventually found the knob, we shamefully made good our escape, thankful that general aviation aircraft are not equipped with horns! (N May, Perth)

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