Dave Hunt

1 hour ago, Happy Hippo said:

I remember reading about that incident.

 

The pilot managed to glide over 40 mile and received an AFC for his efforts.

 

One of those events where having plenty of altitude is definitely your friend.

As a famous German fighter pilot put it, "The three most useless things are fuel you've used, runway behind you and height you've lost."

Dave

1 hour ago, Winslow Boy said:

Don't want to pour water on your celebrations but don't you think they could have at least got the colour of the cake decoration correct.

At least it wasn't green (or Flying Scotsman 😝)

Dave

2 hours ago, Northmoor said:

Presumably if you have sufficient to get into friendly territory, the option remained to put it down somewhere empty and straight (I'm thinking of what was allowed in pre-1990 West Germany)?

There was a famous incident in Vietnam when a USAF F4 was hit by flak and lost all his fuel in short order. The crew were then faced with ejecting over hostile territory but the formation leader got the stricken aircraft to drop the arrestor hook then came up behind and lodged the end of the hook into the rain clearing slot just in front of his windscreen. He then pushed the other aircraft back to the south and when near base backed off so the crew could eject over friendly territory. I believe he got some sort of medal.

Dave

2 hours ago, polybear said:

 

I imagine that if you'd had to bang out then the subsequent conversation at the BOI would've been "interesting" and probably somewhat career limiting

The situation wasn't of my making - honestly. I actually got praise for coping with what could have been loss of an aircraft. It's too involved to go into in detail but it resulted from rapidly deteriorating weather that hadn't been forecast and multiple screwups by air traffic and operating authorities. The thing that saved me was that I got so p!ssed off with what was going on that I declared UDI and ignored what the above mentioned nerks wanted me to do, which would have resulted in us running out of fuel and jumping out.

Dave

I won’t go into detail is but the closest I ever came was landing a Phantom one night in Germany with the low level fuel light having been on for quite a while and about 250 lb showing on the gauge. There was a warning below the gauge that indications below 600 lb were unreliable. The next day the senior engineering officer told me that the amount of fuel they had put into the aircraft was the same as the book said it would hold. He reckoned that I must have had less than a minute of useable fuel left. I didn’t actually have brown strides but it was close.

Dave

1 minute ago, polybear said:

 

And "Oh sh1t" means you haven't got enough.....

Sometimes disguised by “Errr, any gravyboats (tankers) on towline (standard refuelling area) X with a few tons giveaway?” or, “Errr, Firebird 3 is just nipping into Keflavik for a spot of fuel. See you later.”

Don’t bother asking how I know about such things.

Dave

Apologies Bill. It will come as no great surprise that it took me three goes to pass O level German.

Dave

3 hours ago, Compound2632 said:

 

In English, doesn't rhyme. 'Two little ducks', to which the congregation responds 'quack, quack".

In German, “Zwei kleine Ente,” to which the reply is, “Flak, flak.”

Dave

2 hours ago, Happy Hippo said:

I was always under the impression that in RAF terminology, Bingo was the point at which you needed head for home before you ran out of go-go juice.

Bingo means you have reached a fuel state where you can just complete the sortie as planned but have none to spare. Joker means you have just got enough fuel to get home with none to spare.

Dave

20 minutes ago, Happy Hippo said:

Or just put 25 April into the PB version of the Causing Chaos and Misery diary.

That day is so marked in both the schools I attended and in the RAF. Funny that…..

Dave 

1 hour ago, tigerburnie said:

We buy meat from the farmer or on occasion a butcher, fruit and veg from the fruit and veg shop or farmers market, bread from the village cafe or the town bakers, non perishables from the supermarkets. During the summer fruit and veg comes from the garden, potatoes are delivered by the coal man..................(who is a farmer who also diversifies).

We tend to buy meat, fish and some fruit and vegetables from market traders on a Wednesday and Saturday and bread, cakes and pastries as well as cheese from a local delicatessen. Milk is delivered in glass bottles to our doorstep three times a week. Other things are mainly bought from a supermarket but we don’t use delivery services because we prefer to see what we are buying, want to reduce the amount of single use plastic we use and to help preserve the existence of real shops.

Dave

I normally drink Prosecco rather than Champagne but if someone presents me with a bottle of the latter it seems churlish not to get stuck in.

Dave

Jamie, good news about Beth - hopes and prayers for a swift recovery.

Dave

Had an enjoyable and relaxing day yesterday being driven around and forced to drink champagne and eat cake. Due to an effective security screen, no bears or hippos were seen during consumption.

Dave

9 hours ago, Steamport Southport said:

 

Fünf­und­fünfzig - Snakes Alive

 

🐍🐍

Shouldn’t that be zwei und zweizig?

Dave

(The autocorrect tried to change that to zero and xeroxing 🤣

As long as it does the job they can use whatever they like. I did know someone who tried to do it himself with cotton buds and made a right mess of his ear that ended up needing hospital visits so maybe that won’t be an option though.

Dave

Off to the pharmacist shortly to have an earwax removal job, which will be only the second time I’ve ever needed it. Old age I guess (tomorrow will be my Sunset Strip birthday).

TTFN

Dave

We have the same situation, The plumber we use responds very quickly should we have an emergency and is reliable for annual servicing as well as being reasonable with his charges. The only snag is that getting him to attend for non-urgent jobs is sometimes a pretty drawn-out process; for instance, we have a partially blocked radiator that needs attention but so far it has taken four months for him not to attend.

Dave

54 minutes ago, Winslow Boy said:

Personal experience or you know someone whose second cousin was on talking terms with the janitorial staff at the said establishment?

Personal experience; they were gold Abel Labels with black lettering. 

Dave

And on the warning cones in the Gents at Lime Street station that had the legend WET FLOOR on them, someone had added, "Please note this is not an order."

Dave