Bloody RAF Showoffs. . . . . .

[Phil Perry1]

Well,. . . they've really upset me now,. . .this afternoon, my mate Chris ( yes,. . .another boring pilot type,. . ) was driving along a country lane with his van full of home made beer,. . .( Brown Ale, . . 7.5% ABV ) some of this consignment was destined for Phil's back shed shack. . . .( he is the Club's home made beer guru and has been succesfully supplying most of us with illegal non-govermnmental drinking covestibles for some years. . .) when a Tornado GR summat or other flew directly over him at ( he reckons,. . .but you know how pilots exaggerate ) about 150 feet,. . .doing around ( And he was only guessing here. . .) 450 knots. . . . the noise startled him so much, ( So HE said. . .) that he slammed on his brakes, ( he said that he thought he'd run over something and it had stuck on his underside ) . . . . that he momentarily lost control of his charge and ran into a ditch. . . .

 

The result was that the load of bottled beer shot forward and 70% of it was lost in broken glass. . . . . .

 

Every cloud has a silver lining ( . . .of course, . . .unless you are flying thru it accidentally. . .) so he came to MY PLACE FIRST. . . so I got primary dibs at what was left intact.

 

I am now enjoying some rather "Newcastle Brownish" substance which is going down very well,. . .especially with my Brother Ray's home made vodka on the side. . . . . .

 

This is why I can continue to make sparkling and intuitive posts to inadvertantly annoy the $hit out of Teckair and a few others and continue to keep up my reputation as completely irrelevant.

 

*****EDIT TO UPDATE*****

 

Just had a word with Chris the bootlegger,. . . . he's called the RAF on Freephone 2230 and asked why one of their aircraft caused him to run off the road,. . .they said ( so he says ) SORRY. . .we realise that your airfield zone has what we call a class 2 "Avoidance" category,. . .but we are training quite a few foreign pilots, and that particular aircraft crew were several degrees off track" . . .end of conversation, end of phone call. ( I should have mentioned that Chris was diriving past our airfield when this incident allegedly occurred. . . . .) we have had an RAF low flight training avoidance category for 20 yeras, as their antics were upsetting some of the students,. . .having high speed jets flying underneath them in the circuit.. . . .

 

 

[Old Koreelah]

Phil how do you Poms fit all them hairy planes in such a little island?

 

 

[Phil Perry1]

Phil how do you Poms fit all them hairy planes in such a little island?

Yes, that would be a bit of a conundrum if it were not for the fact that our nice Mr. Camoron has cut defence spending beyond the bone, so I guess 75% of our hairyplanes are stacked one on top of anther in a multi storey hangar somewhere, leaving just a half dozen or so for training. . . whereas the private Civvie types stand idle gathering dust as due to world financial problems, the owners can't afford to run them . . . ? apart from a handful of rich people that is,. . .still,. . .it enhances air safety wonderfully, bugger all to crash into midair. . . .

 

 

[Birdseye]

Not so many years ago, we would have had German, Belgian, US and others as well as the RAF flying around (apart from Wednesday afternoons which was sports time and a great time for the Russkis to invade). Places like the 'Mach loop' in Wales and other LFA had a very tight booking system. Then add crop sprayers, air taxi and private stuff. Had a fraction of the radio waffle that we have here in Oz.

 

 

[Phil Perry1]

Not so many years ago, we would have had German, Belgian, US and others as well as the RAF flying around (apart from Wednesday afternoons which was sports time and a great time for the Russkis to invade). Places like the 'Mach loop' in Wales and other LFA had a very tight booking system. Then add crop sprayers, air taxi and private stuff. Had a fraction of the radio waffle that we have here in Oz.

That's interesting Birdy,. . . .the radio chatter bit I mean,. . .when I was flying around in the centre during the seventies, I often carried a vinten taxi radio, converted to the 2 metre ham band, I could nearly always raise a convo on ch 40, 50, or 51 FM, when I hadn't heard a damn thing for hours on the VHF airband !

 

Once worked Darwin Flight service on 8 megs HF, ( if I remember the freq. correctly. . .) by winding the wire trailing aerial out around 104 turns, but since I was around 1300 nm away from them, I just did it and called it a "radio check" . . .they were quite nice about it and we chatted for a few minutes ! The CFA "Smokenet" was another channel you could have a chat on, but the RFDS pilots were a bunch of nancies and wouldn't talk to a PPL,. . . .too low class I guess.

 

My croppie / instructor mate Sir David Squirrell once regaled me of a tale where one of his mates was up the bush one day and Darwin kept insisting he was lost when he didn't give them a really accurate position fix. . . in the end he "225'd" the station, apparently, this was the first time an aircraft commander had ever done that.

 

He admitted to David that his actual position on th WAC chart was " 2 miles West abeam numerous sand ridges"

 

Much better than fisherman's stories these were. . . . .

 

And now you're moaning about TOO MUCH radio traffic ? ? ? ? there's no pleasing some people.

 

Phil