Very quick - newly washed Heron. Just me. Heavy rain. Stare at Horizon (instrument) because there was water in it. The tide came up and due to the soap, bubbles started to form. Then the sculpted buckets in the huge brass giro hooked into the water. For moment, a miniature washing machine.
Memories keep coming back, but this is a Dove. Left CAFU Stansted one beautiful night. I'd been bombing around the circuit failing engines and some of the starboard engine's life-blood and been used. ( carried 5 gallons of spare oil to Turin one night)
Fat dumb and relieved the day was over, the right prop went fully fine. I'd practised and practised over-speed drills when I was a DC3 skipper, and now all I had in my windshield was stars. My thumb was still pressing the huge button when I realised what had happened. I'd seen 5000 rpm go by before the thing feathered but the engine survived thanks in part to being over 60 degrees nose up. It really sounded as though it had exploded.
Next day the engineers questioned me about the bent button bracket. It was well bent. 'It took two of us to bend it straight again'. Funny what adrenalin will do.
A Peter's Aviation Heron and a party of Norfolk farmers, somewhere in France, now drunk as skunks and determined to be home in time for dinner. Fat pilot from a country NE a bit. He sniggered at me, and then the aircraft. He mocked the propulsive power units with circular finger movements.
We were bottled in, and the farmers took it upon themselves to start pushing. They'd be savvy enough to remove the chocks and the brakes had long lost their pressure. They'd managed to stop the fat pilot sniggering, since it was heading towards his Lear. It was my falsetto scream that made the farmers heave it to a standstill.
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Last edited by Loose rivets; 24th Mar 2020 at 03:43.