Sit up and take notice or close shaves
1: From a post of mine in PPrune on 11th November 2008.
" Collision avoidance in cloud. It has been a risk since flying began. About all you can do is listen on the radio for conflicting traffic and hope that you manage to see them when you are in cloud.
I recall a near miss in the Bindook area many years ago on the way to Sydney, going through clulmus cloud and just as I was leaving one and before entering the next one, an unannounced VFR traffic crossed at right angles to me at our altitude. That was my luck for the day."
2 Departing Kuching for Singapore one day, climbing through about Flight level150 and between Thunderstorms, we took a lightning strike just on the right hand side of the cockpit. The First Officer, even through he was well strapped in, hit his head on the roof of the cockpit and knocked himself out. After a short while he came back to a conscious state and I always remember his first words, "Captain, I was not much help to you in that, was I", He is now a Captain on a Citation Ten Bizjet.
The remainder of the trip to Singapore had lots of problems due to static build up in the aircraft, however we made it even with plenty of holes in the wing trailing edges and the elevators on the tail plane.
3: I had three complete loss of pressure incidents, all from Flight Level 410 in South East Asia, before we found the fix and on the first one, both the quick don masks failed to operate correctly due to faulty surclips. We used passenger masks that came out of the ceiling while we got down to a breathable altitude
4: The Dance of the Falcon at Sydney Airport on runway 16R with a low level Jet Upset that we were luckly to come back from!
Tmb