Originally Posted by
chevvron
OC 613 (Jacko) was very hot on ensuring the winch was left in the coirrect state; he would ask 'if you checked the oil level one morning and discovered it was excessive, what would you do?'
Well the 2 drum winch had gravity petrol feed to the engine and if you left the fuel cock on overnight, you risked having petrol seep into the engine thus increasing the oil level.
Ah the dreaded petrol in sump because someone left the fuel on all night (worse if fuel tank full).
In the real aviation world this would be classed as 'oil dilution' for starts in very cold climates but of course we had no info on that so a sump drain was the required fix. Staff Cdt fix was to tow said winch to a 'remote' out of sight runway drain, drop the sump plug and problem solved. Then back to MT section and avail oneself of a suitable quantity of OMD 110 for the Bedford engine. As it was usually a Civ Inst that had fouled up (never a Staff Cdt) we just dealt with it and said nothing. However one day whilst engaged on a similar mission we were stopped by 'the powers to be' before we had dropped the plug, and sent off to do airfield duties. Some time later and errant winch was still not operational as 'the powers to be' had failed to find a suitable spanner to undo the rather large plug. Staff Cdts 'grilled' to find out how we were going to remove plug.!!!. OH, Cdt F/Sgt.............. does that with his VW Beetle hub nut ring spanner (which had 36 & 40 mm end's) !!!! You could neve get one over the Staff Cadets 'Ever'.
No one ever found out how we kept the 'stove' going in our HQ. Answer was a nocturnal visit in our SWB Rover to one of the mess's coke store's. After filling and securing said fuel Rover was hosed out and returned to hangar, those stoves would glow red hot. Twenty A&B's in a week, for Cadets by Cadets proud to have been part of it.