Hi all
Excellent thread this. Very GASIL-y. I have two for your perusal:
I destroyed a Shadow after taking off right at the end of VFR, into the vicinity of two CBs, failing to take note of the drift I was encountering and striking a tree at the threshold as I came in to land.The aircraft shed it's right wing and cartwheeled in, ending up with me lying in the remains of the pod with the rest of the aircraft in many,many small pieces.
Episode two was going up in an open-cockpit single seater and almost being strangled by a badly-secured helmet/ intercom lead set-up. I avoided crashing by a hair's breadth, having had the stick jammed by the intercom cable in my frantic attempts to restrain the lid from departing.The helmet was being lifted up from my head by the visor, which flipped up in the airstream and the ear-defenders(a separate item from the helmet shell) had been blown off my head and the lead had wrapped itself around my neck. To say that I resembled a one-armed wallpaper hangar is to underestimate how busy I was trying to sort it out. I managed to get things secured enough to fly back to the 'field, but I was shaking so much I couldn't land for ten minutes.
To this day, I believe that whichever god looks after fools and idiots was working flat out on my behalf.
regards
TDD