Well, they chopped me!
I bumped through he trainng system and finally succumbed to autopilot (AFCS? What did we call them?) runaways and engine failures while attached to 300ft of cable in a 50' hover in the dark.
The station Chief Iinstructor (if that was what he was called ), the great aforementined T***** L******* was a big softie and genuinely disiked chopping people, so to soften the blow pulled out from behind his desk a sootie glove puppet who waved his wand at me and said in a silly voice, "Shag, you're chopped!" Even than I had to laugh. It was the biggest disaster and the yet biggest relief in my life.
The aftermath was not so pleasant. Chopees weere sent to RNE Seafield Park in Gosport to spend a couple of lonely and miserable days being kept waiting waiting to see (for a whole 15 minutes) the under-employed and grandly named NAAB (Naval Air Advisdory Board) which consisted of two of the most woefully inadequate, disinterested and worthless oxygen thieves the Navy then posessed, LtCdrs Smith and Jones. These two paragons were supposed to assess your training records and determine your further career path, civvy or military, but were incapable of determining anything beyond the earliest moment they could knock off and get to the bar. I recieved nothing worthwhile from them whatsoever. One hardly expects fluffy treatment from the military but the level of help and advice provided to people in that uncomfortable and critical point in their lives was absolutely zero. It was disgraceful that they told me that I'd never again fly for a living though they must have known full well that having Wings I had effectively reached the standard of a CPL; that, after all, was one of the more basic pieces of knowledge required in their job.
Almost 2 years later in one of those impossibly unlikely coincidences I discovered that I had the necessary for a CPL and soon found myself thrungeing around the sky in an antique clockwork mouse (Bell47), a far cry from the lovely sleek and straightforward Gazelle. The mighty Chinook followed, all too briefly and tragically, then almost back to the SeaKing in the S61 and so on through a dozen more types, both rotary and FW.
Nowadays I'm also in that FltLt, GpCapt, AVM position.
Being chopped seemed the worst thing that ever happened at the time, but now it is clear that it was the best thing possible. Pinging isn't much fun I'm told, and there is life, variety and adventure after the chop.
And all achieved without any input whatsoever from the useless, idle tossers at NAAB.
Some 20 years later I wrote a letter to someone in the land of gale force fog and recieved a long, handwritten reply back full of humour, kindness and genuine interest. I will treasure it forever. It was signed Sootie.
Last edited by Agaricus bisporus; 9th Nov 2010 at 12:05.