Janspeed

iTrader: (1)

Unfortunately too many friends and students have suffered fatal, or near fatal accidents in the last 10 years....

It can 'happen' to anyone, but those that push it too far for a laugh, usually find out the first.

I think anyone here who has friends or family flying can tell you some stories.

J4CKO

iTrader: (1)

Navy recruitment film ?

I always thought it was a Homo Erotic classic !

Janspeed

iTrader: (1)

That being the point!!

unclebuck

There's a few palm pilots on here...

Janspeed

iTrader: (1)

har har!!

Leslie

FCD mentioned my part in military flying when this thread was first in existence. What he said is absolutely true, military operational flying is as good as you will get for variety, thrills, and satisfaction. Hard to beat flying into the A5 pass at 400 knots+ at low level where you have to take a "racing line" to get round the corner missing the hard bits and overbanking during the turn to pull the nose down to stay at the nominated height, which is slightly below the A5 it being up the mountainside a bit.

Most of my flying was low level ground attack by day and night, and I would not have missed it for anything.

I did fly the RAF VC10 as well though and we operated in exactly the same way as a civil airline. I found I also enjoyed that very much. It was done very fairly, sharing as operating pilot where you did the flying bit turn and turn about. I gather that is also done in civil airlines. It was an absorbing job and course we travelled the world. I did not mind staying in a good hotel either. Enjoyed the luxury in fact and the cameradie of being with the entire crew as well. Lots of good laughs I can assure you. There was a great satisfaction in making a smooth procedural approach followed by a decent landing. The VC10 is a suberb machine to fly with excellent handling and when we taxied around the international airports someone would always come up on the R/T to say that is was good to see a real aeroplane for once The "bent beam" approach into the old Kai Tak southerly runway at Hong Kong was the best approach since you could legally be a mild hooligan on the final bit! I still remember the shock I had having landed at Ascension Island at night for the first time only to realise that Green Mountain virtually comes down to the side of the runway at the far end! You only see it when you turn around with the landing lights on to backtrack the runway to taxi back.

I would say that civil flying would be a very satisfying job and quite well paid at that.

Les

andys

Remember seeing them all dumped at the end of the runway at Abingdon after BA had gotten rid of them.

Janspeed

iTrader: (1)

Flew a bit in the UK in the late '90s, and met a few VC10 Navs. and FEs.

They were very fond of it!

Also met a few Lynx/Gazelle, Jaguar, Hunter, ADV/IDS, Lightining, Nimrod and Vulcan pilots. Had a bunch of headaches after those long evenings at the pub

Was worth though, good to hear those accounts and learn a few a bits of wisdom when I was still quite "green". Also learnt to like Lager and Cider!

Had the chance to fly with a Black Arrows founder, Lee Jones. Dont know if he still around nowadays, he turned 70 in '97......

Great fun to say the least, and nowadays it still is great fun even though we are all considered flying criminals and have to strip every time we go through "security"!

Everyday is different form another, expect for the catering