Thanks for the kind words T & B – I often thought of my job in Singapore - if they didn’t want to pay me - I’d do it for free. I had more fun out of 212s than anyone deserved. The best (most fun) contract we had was with the Royal Thai Navy and their purchase of 8 X 212s. A delegation of RTN officers came down to Singapore for three months while the aircraft were kitted out. A certain RTN Commander was the boss. He was smart; one course to the US Navy College, Corpus Christi, had seen him top of the class from 144 students, most of them US. At graduation they raised the Thai Flag at the same rate as the Stars and Stripes – which pleased him. On the one hand – bordering on genius; on the other - a world class, priceless nutter who turned out to be one of my favourite people of all time.
One example: after delivery he was accepting the last of the aircraft at U-Tapao Navy base, only he and I on board. The last check was an auto-rotation. We were 5-6,000 feet over the base and he killed both engines – cold. Some time later we slid to a very short stop on the airfield, out jumps the Commander and, through the still rotating blades, emptied his M16 skywards. As he was grinning at me all the while I don’t know to this day whether, on the one hand - his genius had worked out that he could do this without hitting a blade or, on the other – a world class, priceless nutter had just got lucky. Anyway, it seemed to indicate that the acceptance had been a success so who was I to complain.
Here's one of the eight aircraft at U-Tapao, in VIP colours and clearly having just been blessed by a Buddhist priest. 'forget' with his favourite Commander.
