Originally Posted by
chevvron
Not forgetting the Be36 who landed gear up at Abingdon in about 2004. He'd had total electrical failure, was uncertain of position and phoned us (Farnborough) on his mobile.
Told me he was over an airfield with 2 runways; I asked 'do they cross roughly at right angles or at about 30 deg'. He said right angles so I phoned Benson to ask if they could see an aircraft over Abingdon; they said yes. Course this wasn't positive ident but I told the pilot where I suspected he was and he elected to land (cloudbase was already below 1,000ft).
Phoned me back about 10 min later and said he was down but hadn't been able to lower his gear as it was electrically operated. I gave him the phone number of the guardroom from our Helicopter Landing Site directory so he could try to sort things out.
Course the Army guys there hadn't noticed a thing!
Never heard what happened after that, apart from getting a phone call from a rather puzzled AAIB man who said there was an emergency lowering system fitted to the Be36 in case of electrical failure!
Of course the Army guys didn’t notice...probably because they were too busy supporting ops or training for, instead of being a ginger-middle child telling everyone who can be arrse’d to listen, or who isn’t bored, or hasn’t worked it about all Crabs, how great they are!
Or just maybe the driver was an idiot....like the 2 that joined the circuit at 800ft at Old Sarum with no radio calls when I had just let 10 blokes with self-deployed silk from 12k out of the door, before racing them down at 140kts.
Morons.