Hercvisc

I worked with him in Papua New Guinea when he did a short stint with Southern Air Transport in 95.

It\'s worth looking at Mr Pete Taber\'s website www.herkybird.info Some of the photos are a wee bit out op proportion, especially the one I was surprised to find of me standing on a prop we were building in Thiet Sudan. It was to replace the one nearest the ground on my profile picture.

What, with a letter you can\'t even pronounce?

Well, I didn\'t do that quote very well. However, that\'s not such a bad rule and would have saved me a lot of pain and anger had I known about it about twenty years ago in Ethiopia when, as a one man start crew with no headset, and after giving clearance with hand signals to get all four were turning, there was a problem on the flight deck and the pilot waved me to come on board. As always, I stood fwd of the door supporting it with my right hand and operated the lever with my left, and, you\'ve guessed it, the aircraft was slightly pressurised and as the door burst open, my arm was nearly wrenched out of it\'s socket. If we were in the military, I would have been in deep doo doo for the things I said to the crew, especially the engineer who should have known better. I of course, should have checked that the DV window was open, and waited for someone inside to open the door, but we\'d have run out of fuel before that happened, and who would have expected a very seasoned engineer start pressurisation at that stage. PS. I can\'t find it within myself to use a Z in \"pressirisation\", I\'m a Scottish person and we probably invented the word.

lownslow wrote:

I\'m pretty sure that I saw this first on RAF Hercs, and then much later in life, on some L100s. Its written on the steps of the crew door, readable from the outside when they\'re down, and it says \"For Ground and Air Use Only\" I\'m aware that most Hercs don\'t have it and I\'ve always wondered why some procedure put it there. What does it mean? My first and only thought is \"Don\'t open that door if you\'ve ditched in water\", but when the door\'s closed, the warning is upside down. Who is going to take the time to try to read that sh** when ......Glug Glug?? Just a long lived thought.

When I worked on the old Vickers Viscounts in the early eighties, I had to revamp my toolbox with Whitworth/BSF and BA, and it took a long time to be able to glance a nut or bolt and reach for the correct size spanner. Where the Herc commonly uses a 1/4\" nut on a 3/16\" shank, old British aircraft used 2BA, which, if I remember, is about 3/8\" AF (SAE), and that\'s a lot of extra weight when you add them all up. Because the old British sizes have all disappeared, I think that we should take it as read that \"Imperial\" means \"non metric\". Just a thought........ I now live in Australia, and after thirteen years of kilmeters, I\'m still in tune with miles.

Yes it was. How hid you hear about it