Originally Posted by
ancientaviator62
sarn1e,
did you think to offer a trip in the T5 to any of your groundcrew ? I am sure the armourers would have been very interested to see the fruits of their labours being used as intended.
Your point is well made, though a T5 during a missile firing is not the best environment (especially in the dark) for an intro pax ride... Even the experienced French exchange officer found it interesting when one of our missiles misfired and ominously sat there after landing with the armourers creeping up to put the safety break in!
On 5 Sqn, during our last APC in 1987, our Boss took two T5s to Cyprus and flew everyone who wanted a go for 4 weeks (obviously the T5 couldn't fire on the banner). We actually ran out of passengers to fly. For the last week we took off the ventrals, which made the trips (even!) shorter - but very spectacular.
Similarly, on 25 Sqn in 1995, we finished the APC in record time and I then recommended to the Boss that we flew 2 days of (24 total) dedicated pax rides as constituted 4-ships before going to the beach for a week. I well remember a certain Chf Tech saying to me that we didn't need to fly that close just for his benefit as we flew across Akrotiri in box. When we got back to Leeming we had never seen so many serviceable jets (and seemingly limitless spares).
I learned a lot about motivation from those two examples.