Humor in Uniform 4/8/2011

[R J]

4/8/2011
Marine Corps pilots and aircraft maintenance technicians have a special bond.  So I was unfazed when a flyboy described a vexing problem.  “The radio,” he said, “worked intermittently----but only sometimes.”
James Bulman

[Varmintmist]

4/8/2011
Marine Corps pilots and aircraft maintenance technicians have a special bond.  So I was unfazed when a flyboy described a vexing problem.  “The radio,” he said, “worked intermittently----but only sometimes.”
James Bulman

OOOOOH YEEEAH!!

Pilots is edemutated at colleg don't ya know.

A few  11A 799's (ntf pilot error) that stick with me:

"Does not work in third position" fix, Third position is O-F-F

"After engine stop, generator continues to produce power" (this was the CO, I 11A-799'd him 3 times in a week as a E-3) Fix= engine continues to turn after shutdown.

Generator can stay on line until 1250 RPM (ish, I looked up the page and paragraph in the books). He griped it 3 times until the maint chief was standing over my shoulder while I copied the page to send with the form. If you are cocky, ya gotta be right.

We had a plane that came in with the horizon ball upside down that would right itself when it hit the deck. A legit gripe that I put a straight 30+ hours on to find when they got it on the ground with the thing upside down. Pilot reported it, and that it was tracking backwards. The horizon ball has the degrees of the compass on it, think about it.

[Sludge]

LOL if you have been around long enough I think we all have had the O-F-F position thing written up 

We had that written up by a fresh 1st Lt right out of flight school back in 1987 and it got the attention of the whole maintenance dept.  We signed it off as "Radio works fine.  OFF position functioning properly.  Newly installed cyclic stick actuator found at fault."   

For those reading that are not from an aircraft background, the cyclic stick being the control stick in the cockpit of a helo.  Cyclic stick actuator = pilot.

I enjoyed the ones like...   "Tire wear almost out of limits"  to which we signed it off "Almost replaced tires"

I had similar ones with other components too.

The MAF sign offs could get quite funny at times.

[old2soon]

For any of you naval and marine corps aviation types-i helped bring the C2A greyhound into the fleet. The old C1s were gas engined and kinda small-limited cu ft and limited weight hauling capabilities. The C2s on the other hand were much larger-way more powerful-identical engines and props the C-130s used. They also had a segmented disk brake set up that was prone to over heating-especially on land base use. One of our shiny new ensigns(single gold bar) fresh out of flight shool and doing the transition course to the C2 overheated the brakes one fine day-and wanted me to coolthem down with a CO-2 fire extinguisher. Anybody have an idea what happens to metal that is kinda cherry red and you introduce CO-2 to it?? It most generally explodes!! I looked him square in the eye and said with absoulutely no respect to your rate and pay grade sir-do it your own damn self. My saving grace was his instructor pilot that day was the skipper-full commander-silver oak leaf-and he was well versed in the airplanes short comings-and told me later-the short comings of new ensigns. RIDE SAFE.