A funny thing happened at the airstrip the other day...
The fire warning bell in the Twotter didn't test. Instead of blowing our ears off it just went "Clonk!"
My 250-hour co-pilot looked at me with a certain hopeful air, as if I might have a spare fire warning bell in my flight bag. Nope!
(Now, actually I was cheating, since I was pretty sure I already knew the answer.) I asked him to get out the MEL and look up the bell, telling him that if there was no entry for it then we were grounded, eh? Ooh, really piling on the pressure.
It turned out that the bell (Surprise!) is something you can do without as long as the red fire warning lights in the pull handles work. Anyway I reached back over my shoulder and fiddled with it until it sort of rang, just so we wouldn't have to snag it.
Well, it beats hell out of just growling to an impressionable young man that we don't need no steenking bell, that we are going anyway. Wrong message but one I used to get all the time when I was in his shoes.
Another time recently we did two (2) aborts just because of some stupid door warning light that we were 99.99% sure was just a mis-rigged switch. First they did that hasty tweaking of it, when it had checked okay but come on just before V1. The second time, ditto, when I told them to now take their time fixing it right; I was going for lunch to reduce the old stress levels.
I told the Chief Engineer that, yeah, I probably was being a bit picky there but how would I look if that big old main door came flopping open just as I rotated? I NEED to be famous as the guy who ignored the door warning light because he knew better? DeHavilland must have put that system on the airplane for a reason, right?
We can just build a safer way of operating one step at a time. It would be nice if teams of ICAO experts swooped down to sort out our African problems for us with coöperation at the very highest national levels but until that happens I guess it's up to us. And no fair for telling Management I am a wally for not taking a trip, okay? ("Me, Boss, me! I will do that trip/fly that bird/take that load without leaving anything behind!" Ever seen that one happen? No, me neither...)